A Winding Road
by fire4effect
Summary: An assault investigation leads Manhattan SVU on a winding road of investigation including kidnapping and murder.
1. Chapter 01

Chapter 1 

He arrived on the scene, which was alive with cop cars and milling witnesses. The lights of the squads lit up the dark stone buildings with a crazy flashing glow. Uniformed officers were putting up crime scene tape, trying to bring order to the scene - he couldn't tell who were witnesses and who were spectators. He approached the tape, flashing his badge at one of the officers who was noting down information. "Stabler, SVU. Where's the vic?"

"Inside," the officer replied. "She's sitting in one of the booths. Officer Wilson's keeping an eye on her."

"Anybody else hurt?"

"Nope."

As Stabler turned to go inside, the man muttered, "Good luck."

"What do you mean?" he asked, turning back.

The officer shrugged. "Well… Just that she's a real piece of work - that one."

"How so?"

"She hasn't said boo to anyone since I got here. No cooperation on anything. Hates us. I had to put Wilson on her just to keep her here 'til you showed up, because it looked like she was going to do a disappearing act. Cold as ice, that one is."

He was an older cop, Stabler saw, in his fifties and probably close to retirement - still in uniform, still working a beat, never made Sergeant - the sort of cop who never distinguished himself. Not a bad cop, just a cop doing his job and no more. "She's just been assaulted." His words came out harshly, as he'd intended, to the cop whose nametag read O'Hallaran. He made a mental note of the name.

"Yeah, and we never would have found out about it from her." He shook his head. "It was them that told us." He gestured at the milling witnesses. "She's a piece of work. You'll see."

O'Hallaran turned back to the police barricade and grabbed what looked to Stabler like an overzealous journalist working the crime beat and escorted him roughly back through the barricade.

Stabler turned back to the diner. He hoped this officer Wilson had been more compassionate. It was hard enough to deal with victims of sexual assault without them being treated in a ham-fisted manner by some codger cop counting days 'til his pension kicked in.

He opened the door to the diner and looked inside, immediately annoyed. An important rule in working sex crimes was not to leave the victim alone. An officer stood near the door, watching out the window. The woman Stabler presumed was the victim was sitting alone in a booth halfway across the diner. The nametag on the tall black officer near the door read Wilson. There wasn't anything he could do about it now, but he made a mental note to inform the duty officer that these guys were in need of a refresher on victim handling. He presented himself to Wilson. "Stabler, SVU. That her?"

"Yep."

"Then what are you doing over here?" he said, the tone in his voice obvious, but he kept his voice low, so it wouldn't carry.

"Look, Detective. I know the drill, and I tried, man. But she told me to take a hike." He shrugged in a 'so what could I do' sort of way.

"I don't care what she says, you never leave a victim alone." He glared at the man.

"Well, you're here now," Wilson said. "I'd better go help with the rest of the witnesses."

"Yeah, go," Stabler said, watching him exit the diner. He turned toward the young woman.

She sat in one of the rust-colored vinyl booths, a cigarette clenched tight between her lips. Aside from a slight tremor of her hand as she removed the cigarette for exhalation, she didn't look like she'd been assaulted. Of course, Stabler reminded himself, not all victims act the same. Still, she didn't have that fearful, devastated look that many of the victims he met in the course of his job had. Not that she looked exactly normal, he thought as he approached. Her eyes seemed older than they should be, and they had no expression. Some kind of shock leading to apathetic affect maybe, he considered.

He introduced himself and sat down in the booth opposite her. She didn't reply or make any acknowledgement of him, just took another puff of the cigarette.

"Can you tell us what happened, miss, uh, Veronica." He called her by the name written in curlicue script lettering on her somewhat faded diner top. The uniformed officers hadn't yet gotten the full names of everyone involved, and he was a bit embarrassed that he didn't know her last name yet. The uniforms could have at least gotten that, he thought, fuming silently.

She snorted and finally looked at him. "Not Veronica. The uniform fit. Place is too cheap to buy anything new." She gestured dismissively at the rather grungy and rundown little diner around them.

"So your name is…"

"Lynn"

"Lynn what?"

For a moment he thought he saw something in her eyes. Hesitation? Confusion?

"Baker." She took another hard pull on the cigarette. It was nearing the filter, and practiced fingers prepared another for lighting as she inhaled the last of the current one.

"Miss Baker, can you tell us what happened?" He leaned in just a bit and tried to look comforting.

Because he was a police detective, and a tall, broad-shouldered man, Elliot knew he sometimes came across as intimidating. This was to his benefit when dealing with suspects, but sometimes it made things harder with the victims. Sometimes victims responded better to his partner, a woman. It was the one disadvantage he felt that he had, although he believed his experience negated it for the most part. He was proud of how often and how well he could relate to the victims and give them comfort and reassurance. In any case, his partner hadn't arrived yet, although he suspected she was on her way. Even the prospects of a hot date wouldn't keep her from answering a page. At the thought of his partner on her date, he felt that familiar twinge and got angry with himself. He had no right to be jealous - they were just partners.

Lynn Baker lit the new cigarette from the old one, hand still shaking slightly, then looked for someplace to put out the stub. With a shrug, she ground the cigarette butt into the faded vinyl tablecloth. The hot end of ash melted a hole and the smell of burning plastic wafted into the air around them.

"I don't have anything to say."

Certainly hostile, he thought. Some victims were. It was something that the shrinks called misplaced aggression. She had no control over what happened to her and she was directing that anger and loss of control toward those trying to help her. He'd seen it before. "You're a witness to an armed robbery." He deliberately didn't mention the assault.

"So, you've got them." She gestured at the window. "They witnessed it too. You don't need me."

"I do need you. I want to put these guys away for what they did, but I need your help."

"So if I talk to you, then you'll leave me alone?"

He smiled a little and gave a shrug that he hoped would look something like a confirmation to her. Anything to get her talking, even just about the robbery, would be helpful. Once a victim started to talk, it often seemed to get easier for them.

She sighed. "They came in with guns and robbed the place. Dino gave them the money from the till. They yelled and screamed and made everyone put their wallets in a bag. Then they left." She shrugged, exhaling another lungful of smoke that wafted into his face.

Succinct, he thought somewhat sarcastically, trying to not wince outwardly. The uniformed officers had reported a lot more from the other witnesses. Which was why he, an SVU detective, was here. He nodded. "Uh huh. Anything else?"

Another shrug. More smoking. No talking. He knew that sometimes it was difficult to get victims to talk, having worked with so many of them over the years. Still, it always was slightly irritating when they didn't want to help him help themselves. They were the ones needing justice, and he was the one dispensing it. Was cooperation too much to ask?

He reminded himself that while this was his thousandth-something case, for each of the victims he encountered, it was generally their first. There was a fine-line of how hard to push. He'd accidentally crossed it on occasion, but mostly he knew just how far to go - how much a particular individual could handle. He stared at Lynn Baker, keeping his gaze steady, sizing her up - trying to determine how strong she was - how much he could push. She looked calm and collected, other than the nicotine fix she was relying on. She didn't look bruised or beaten on the parts of her that he could see, and he could tell she hadn't been crying. She seemed, as officer O'Hallaran had told him, cold.

Probably a defense-mechanism, he thought. Shock maybe. With some victims it didn't really register what had happened to them, at least at first. Normally it wasn't a great sign because when they finally felt the full effect they were devastated.

She wasn't looking at him, but he kept looking at her. Watching her. Seeing her narrow face and soft colored brown hair. The points of her collar-bones could be seen in the vee of her uniform top. She was thin, he thought, not that wiry thinness that belied a toned musculature, but she was what he'd describe as "slight" if he had to pick a word. Her face remained impassive and cold, and her hazel eyes would not meet his. This was like a staring contest, except he was the only one doing the staring. He tried to look strong and reassuring. Solid. Someone she could rely on to tell her story to.

After what seemed like an hour, but was probably only a couple minutes, she finally looked up at him, just for a moment. He said gently, "The call to 911 said that someone was assaulted."

A shrug and the slight narrowing of eyes was her only response.

Elliot continued to press. "The cook told the responding officer that one of the men raped you."

"Dino should keep his fucking mouth shut!" Her eyes flared as she suddenly glared at him. Her voice was loud, ringing out through the quiet empty diner.

"Why's that?" Stabler asked. "He wants us to catch the guys who hurt you. Don't you want them to pay for what they did?"

She was no longer meeting his gaze. Her eyes looked up and away. He could tell by her increased rate of blinking that she wasn't quite as cold as she was trying to appear. Still, she said nothing. That hard look was edging back in around the corners. Another cigarette was produced from the packet. As she lifted it to her mouth to light it, he reached forward and touched her hand lightly - this was a bit of a risk, he knew. Normally he'd never initiate physical contact with a victim, but a shock was what he was looking for.

She flinched slightly at the unexpected contact, but she didn't pull away. She looked at him again. He held her gaze, noticing that her eyes were surprisingly pale. "Talk to me. Please," he said simply. Then he pulled his own hand back, noticing that for a moment, she left hers there.

"I want to leave. Now."

There was something not quite right about this whole scenario, he thought. He'd dealt with women who didn't want to admit they'd been raped. Many felt too vulnerable to admit what had happened. Or ashamed. Not that they should feel ashamed, he knew, but they did. Society's a bitch, he thought. On the other hand, looking at Lynn Baker's eyes, he knew instantly that she wouldn't give a crap what others thought. So he didn't understand why she wasn't talking. She didn't look all that scared or traumatized either, for someone who'd been raped at gunpoint in front of a dozen witnesses.

"Not until you tell me what happened." He tried his most serious expression. This was a bigger push, he knew, and another risk. She didn't have to tell him squat. That was her right. He knew if he alienated her, she might shut down even further. But he felt that hard edge of hers needed something to blunt it. His own hard edge, perhaps.

"It won't change anything." She shook her head, squinting as she took him in, perhaps trying to judge his resolve. And resolve was something that Stabler knew he had in abundance.

He reached out toward her again, this time careful not to actually touch her. He rested his hand close to hers, leaning in what he hoped would be a comforting but firm gesture. He looked at Lynn closely. The eyes were still hardened to his gaze, and she had that slight puckering around the lips that smokers often got. Her brown hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, only a few strands escaping. He estimated her age at mid-twenties, but he didn't get the feeling that those years were easy ones.

"Lynn, you've got to talk about it. It'll eat you up if you don't. We need to get this guy, make him pay for hurting you… stopping him from hurting anyone else ever again."

She remained silent for a long time. He couldn't tell if she were thinking or if she was simply sinking into a sort of catatonia - some victims did, to try to suppress the pain. Finally after another deep drag on the cigarette, she said, "You aren't going to let me out of here until I tell you, are you?"

Blunt and to the point, he observed. He smiled grimly. "Nope."

And so she began to talk, in a quiet voice with little audible emotion. The story didn't pour our like it did with so many victims, but it dribbled out - like a faucet turned on just enough for a slow and steady trickle. And Elliot listened, as he did so well and so often, absorbing the information, trying to soak it all in without judgment, keeping his face impassive and comforting, but most of all trying to keep his anger at what wrongs could be done to a fellow human in tight check.

Lynn Baker had been working her regular shift at the diner that evening when the two armed men had burst in. The regular customers, most from the SRO building down the street, along with a few strangers who had somehow wandered into the place despite the decrepit atmosphere, had been forced at gunpoint to move to one side of the diner, away from the door and windows. Dino, the short order cook and night manager, had been forced to empty the till into the waiting bag one of the men held.

"They went around to all the customers for their wallets and jewelry. Not that any of those cheap bastards have much. You should see how they tip me for busting my ass to bring them coffee refills all damn night." More pulls on the cigarette and she looked through the window at several diner customers who were still being interviewed by uniformed officers outside.

They certainly didn't look like a flush crowd, Elliot agreed silently. Most were wearing tatty clothes and some looked like they may not have bathed in a while.

She shifted in her seat, and the cigarette remained still in her hand. He could see the muscles in her jaw tighten.

"Then one of them came up behind me and grabbed me. Had his arm around my throat. Asked me where my purse was."

Elliot said nothing. She wasn't in need of prompting, he knew. She just needed some space and time to get through it.

"I told him to go fuck himself." She said the words with the harsh inflection that she probably used on the perp, Elliot thought, or maybe like she wanted to say it to him for making her relive it. Her gaze was harsh and she was looking right at him as she said the words.

She looked away then and took a deep breath. "He had the gun under my chin." She gave another audible breath. "Then he laughed. He said, 'Fuck myself? Did you hear that? Bitch told me to fuck myself." She rubbed the place on her chin where Elliot suspected the gun barrel had been pressed. He could see a scrape there, and predicted a bruise would be appearing shortly.

"He said he was going to teach me a lesson. Called me a bitch again. Told the other guy to keep an eye on things."

Her voice had flat and a little strange, Elliot thought. Her recounting of the events revealed little of the terror and trauma she'd surely been subjected to. Even the slight hand-tremor was gone now. The cigarette had burned down so a long ash was hanging absurdly from the butt clasped in between her fingers.

"And then?"

"And then he raped me." She was looking at him again, and her eyes were hard and matter-of-fact, looking directly into his.

He waited, but it seemed that was all that was immediately forthcoming.

"Lynn, I need to know what happened in order to do my job," he said. "I know it's difficult." He was starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable under her hardened gaze now. That was a new one. It was like she was sizing him up, making a measure of him. He willed himself not to look away, not to show his discomfort.

With a sudden motion she tossed the cigarette to the floor. "He forced me against the counter, pushed my skirt up, tore my underwear off and raped me." She gave him a look that was almost accusatory. "Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"I just want to hear what happened."

"Uh huh."

"Look, I'm just doing my job. My job is to catch this guy. I'm on your side."

"Well, I'm not going to go into all the details so you can get your kicks. The guy raped me. Then they left." She reached for the cigarette pack again and busied herself with lighting up.

Further information about her assault did not appear to be forthcoming. Elliot tried not to let his internal sigh show. Maybe Olivia could get through to her better than him. He'd done the best he could. At least he'd gotten a basic statement. "Can you describe the men?"

She thought for a minute and then divulged a litany of descriptive elements that could have matched a great proportion of the men in the city. Average height, average build, moderately dark complexion - white or biracial or possibly Hispanic. Nothing distinguishing - no visible scars of tattoos. No particular accent.

Elliot noted the details. He'd compare them with the other witness descriptions later.

She stood abruptly. "I'm going home now." She edged out of the booth.

Elliot jumped up and headed her off at the doorway, seeing that a couple of the unis outside had also seen the sudden movement and were looking in at them. "No. You need to go to the hospital."

"I'm fine. I don't need a doctor."

Elliot was getting a bit tired of dealing with one Miss Lynn Baker. He was normally very patient with the victims he dealt with in his line of work, but there were limits. "You might be injured. You should get checked out."

She snorted. "Oh come on. He just raped me. I'm not going to drop over dead."

Sometimes victims went for shock value, Elliot knew. It was part of the anger and discomfort they felt at being violated - a way of making the outside observer feel a little bit of what they were feeling. And it was working. He'd never heard the words "just" and "raped" come from a victim before. From suspects, sure, but not from a victim.

She didn't seem impressed by his arguments about the need to collect evidence, either. "Why bother, you're never going to get him. And you've got plenty of evidence here -" she gestured around to where the Crime Scene Unit officers had begun to process. Elliot noticed one of the techs working with a small clump of light-colored fabric that he suspected was her panties.

"I just want to go."

"After."

"Now."

"I'm sorry, I can't let you do that," he said. It was a bluff, he knew. He had no right to force her to be examined. But maybe she wouldn't realize. Sometimes all it took was a little prodding. "We need that evidence. And you need to be checked out for injuries."

"I'm not injured. He put his pee pee in my hoo hoo, he didn't shoot me or hit me over the head. I'll be fine."

Another attempt at shock value. And again successful. More words he'd not heard from a victim before. Maybe that old cop O'Hallaran did have her number - she was a cold one. But she was still a victim. Still in need of justice, whether she wanted it or not. And those guys might hurt someone else. Making this case could save other women from being assaulted. Other women who would be more like the victims he normally dealt with - the devastated and frightened ones, the ones that clung to him for help and reassurance and made him feel proud of doing this job.

"Quit it." He said angrily. "Don't you dare make light of it. Do you know how many women get raped every year in this city? What they go through? How hard it is for most of them to get justice? I won't let you throw that chance away. We need that evidence. And you need counseling, lady." He stood firm at the doorway, blocking her from leaving as he counted down from ten, backwards, silently. He'd give himself that long to maintain his bluff. When he got to three, he started to feel nervous.

He'd just reached one, when she said, "You're not going to leave me alone until I agree to it, are you." It was more a statement than a real question.

He gave her that same grim smile as before. "Nope." He watched as she closed her eyes and shrugged, acquiescing.

On their way out of the diner, he noticed his partner, detective Olivia Benson, had arrived at the scene, wearing what looked like a nice cocktail dress under her coat. That sudden feeling he refused to call jealousy flared from the ember he carried around in the pit of his stomach. _Easy boy_, he told himself. After all, she was here, wasn't she? Must have left her date at dinner, he thought with a feeling of satisfaction that was immediately quashed by his own conscience. _She deserves to be happy, doesn't she? It's not like you and her… _He pushed those feelings back down, hoping they'd never resurface.

Stabler began walking Lynn to the waiting ambulance. "While the paramedics get you situated, do you mind if I go let my partner know what's going on?"

She shrugged with a look that told him she definitely preferred his absence to his presence.

As they passed Wilson, he ordered, "Come and sit with her. I'll be back in just a minute."

His partner was interviewing what he thought must be the cook, Dino. The man, in his fifties with a sunken chest and greasy hair covered with a hairnet, was cursing as he walked up.

"Thanks for coming." Elliot told her as Dino's swearing eased off. "I could have handled it, but thanks."

"No problem." She nodded toward the witness, "This is Dino Carelli, he cooks and manages the place at night. Mr. Carelli, this is my partner, Detective Stabler."

"She all right?" Dino said, nodding toward the ambulance, where Lynn could be seen sitting inside, although Stabler noticed that it didn't look as if the paramedics or Wilson were having much luck with her, either. Wilson waved at him, trying to hurry him.

"I think so. We're going to the hospital now. Did you see what happened Mr. uh, Carelli?"

The small Italian man exploded. "See it? He fucking did her not six feet from me!" As officers and witnesses turned to look at him, he lowered his voice again. "The other one had a gun pointed at me, or I'd have taken his head clean off, the effing bastard." He huffed loudly. "He was a cool one. Said he was going to do her, and he sure did. Pushed her over the counter right there in front of everybody. Grunting like a pig, that gun at her head, finger tight on the trigger. I thought maybe he'd pull it when he… well, you know."

Detective Benson was making notes. Elliot glanced over at the ambulance. He shouldn't be leaving a victim for too long.

"Liv, I've got to get her to the hospital now - St. Lukes. Come by when you're done here, OK?"

"Want me to come with you?"

"Nah, I've got it covered. Stay here and get the rest of the statements. Make sure the lab guys don't screw up." He turned. "Thanks, Mr. Carelli. Please, whatever you can remember, it will help us catch these guys." Seeing the look on the manager's face, he had no doubts that Mr. Carelli was going to do his best to aid their investigation. He smiled. It made a nice change from the open hostility he left sitting in the back of the ambulance.

The trip to the hospital was relatively quiet aside from Lynn refusing to let the paramedic so much as strap a blood pressure cuff on her. "Look," she said when Elliot had tried to intervene. "I agreed to come so you could get your precious evidence. When we get to the hospital, I'll give the doctor a nice long look at my snatch, OK? But tell these toe rags to leave me the hell alone."

He couldn't figure her out. While it was certainly true that victims reacted differently to being assaulted, it was also true that he'd not yet experienced any rape victim with the attitude or bearing of Miss Lynn Baker. Perhaps she was holding her emotions so tightly in check that it made her come across like this, he thought, as he watched one of the paramedics snatch a cigarette from her hand as she was about to light it.

"No smoking!" the man yelled, pointing to the sign posted.

"Fuck you," she spat.

"Calm down." Elliot said, holding up his hands at both of them. "Let's just get there, OK?"

He ended up leaving her on her own with the medical staff once they'd arrived at the hospital - "I said I'd let the doctor look, not you. Get the hell out!" - and was waiting when his partner arrived.

"How is she, El?" Olivia asked, looking inquiringly at him. She sat down. He noticed her dress again. It was black and the fabric looked silky. He suppressed the urge to graze his knuckles across the bit that had flopped over the side of the chair. Nobody would have seen, but he would have known that he did it. He clasped his hands in his lap to control the impulse.

Hers was a question that he didn't know how to answer. He shrugged. How was she? Uncommunicative, uncooperative, and cold as ice was what he wanted to say, but he held back. It wasn't fair to judge her reactions so soon after her assault, he told himself. "The doctor's in there now," he said, instead. "She didn't want me in the room," he added, then wished he hadn't, thinking that the words came out a bit defensively. He saw Olivia nod in an understanding fashion. It happened sometimes - women victims not wanting male detectives too close. But he was pretty sure his partner would have had her presence rebuffed as well, woman or not.

"So what else did Carelli say?" he asked, to keep things moving away from the non-cooperative state of his complaining witness.

"Sounded pretty bad." Benson reported. "The guy pushed her forward over the counter in front of everyone, ripped off her underwear and raped her with the gun, calling her a bitch and threatening to shoot her. Then he put the gun barrel in her mouth and told her to suck it. Made her give them all a show and threatened to shoot the back of her head off. Then he pushed her over the counter raped her vaginally." She sighed. "After, he told the other guy it was his turn. He might have raped her as well but there was a siren down the street. They both bolted."

"Siren?"

"Just a squad going by en route to a big accident down on Amsterdam. No calls came in on the robbery or rape until after the perps were gone."

"Sounds pretty brutal," Elliot said. Definitely a lot more than Lynn's statement alluded to. Not that any rape wasn't a brutal thing, something he knew too well.

Benson looked curiously at him. "Does Carelli's story differ from what she told you? There were close to a dozen witnesses and the statements on the assault are pretty consistent."

Stabler shook his head. "She didn't give much detail. She's a tough one. Won't talk. Finally admitted the guy raped her, probably just told me enough to get me off her back. It was all I could do to get her to agree to the rape kit." He didn't mention his somewhat coercive bluff to his partner.

He nodded at the doorway and they both stood as a doctor came through into the waiting area. "Detectives?"

"Yes, that's us. How is she, Doctor?" Stabler asked.

The doctor, a middle-aged balding man, gestured for them to sit. "Physically she's going to be all right. She has a few injuries. There's some bruising, as you might expect, and some tearing from assault with some kind of object -" He paused, looking inquiringly at them.

"Gun barrel." Benson supplied.

Elliot had worked with Olivia long enough that he could hear nuances that others couldn't. He heard the surprise in her voice that Lynn hadn't told the doctor this about her assault. Elliot, however, was not surprised. He wondered if the victim had said anything at all during the exam.

"I see. Yes, a gun barrel is consistent with the internal injuries. We did the rape kit, a full STD panel, and she asked for the morning after drug. I think she'll heal all right from the physical injuries, just needs some time to rest. But, uh, there's something else…" The doctor trailed off.

"What is it?"

The doctor sat down, looking weary, on a chair next to Benson, his face dark and troubled. "It's clear that she has suffered long-term abuse."

Benson blinked, "What kind of abuse?"

"There are signs pointing to both physical and sexual abuse."

"Bingo." Elliot thought, not saying the word out loud. Abuse might explain more than a few things about Lynn Baker.

"What signs? What did she say?" Benson asked,.

"She's got a lot of scarring. Actually, she didn't say anything - wouldn't confirm it. Hardly said a word through the whole exam. When I asked her about the scarring, she told me to hurry up with whatever swabs I needed and get my nose out of her… uh, her cunt." The doctor said the word hurriedly, as if uncomfortable with the sound of it.

Stabler was slightly glad to see someone other than himself experience the discomfort of dealing with Miss Baker. Prior abuse definitely went a long way toward explaining her strange affect with him.

"What kind of scarring?" Benson asked.

"Scarring on her body," the doctor said. "Like she's been beaten badly in the past - back, legs, buttocks, breasts. Scarring on her genitals and internally as well, prior to the incident today. She's been abused, probably for a long time given the extent of the damage."

"Could she just be into rough sex?" Elliot asked.

"I don't think so," the doctor said. "The scars look like they go back quite a while. I think she was probably a kid when it started."

Things began to make even more sense to Stabler. Lynn Baker did have a hardened attitude something like he'd seen with abused kids.

"But she wouldn't say anything about it?" Benson asked.

"Well, we got photos and documented everything." The doctor looked uncomfortable. "She didn't like it. Said I only was supposed to get your evidence and that she didn't agree to anything else. We did what we could, of course."

"I'm sure you did, doc," Stabler said.

"Here's the rape kit." He passed Benson a sealed paper bag marked 'Evidence.' "I've got to get back to the ER, there's a shooting coming in in five minutes. You can go in and talk to her now if you like - it's the third curtain on the left." With that, the doctor hurried out of the room

"Sounds like this one is gonna be a challenge," Olivia said as the doctor departed.

"Yeah." he said, thinking she didn't know the half of it. But maybe now that they knew about the abuse they'd be better able to get the victim's cooperation. Maybe tonight they'd caught not just one case, but two, depending on how long ago her previous abuse had ended. If it had ended, he thought, a feeling of disgust filling him.

"You want me to give her a try?"

While Elliot had doubted that Benson would have much better luck with Lynn Baker than he did, it was worth a try. And maybe now that the examination was over she'd be in a more talkative mood.

"Maybe with a woman…" He shrugged.

Benson nodded. They both proceeded down the short hallway and into the exam area. It was empty.

"Third on the left, he said, right?" Stabler asked, counting out the exam areas.

"Yeah." They looked around, finding only an elderly man on one side, and a vacant bed on the other.

"Nurse!" Stabler called out to a woman hurrying by in scrubs, a piece of technical-looking medical equipment clutched in her hands

She stopped at the sign of Stabler's badge being flashed.

"Where's the patient who was in this room?"

The nurse looked in, surprised. "She was in there a minute ago."

As it turned out, none of the staff had seen Lynn Baker leave. The hospital was searched, but she was not found. Stabler was fuming as they waited for the security tapes. Losing a victim was definitely a no-no. He threw blame at any nearby staff about them not keeping track of their patients. His ranting about the situation was finally stopped mid-sentence by a particularly frazzled nurse who snapped, "She's not a prisoner here, you know. And we aren't guards." As she hurried off to the ambulance bay, he had to admit to himself that she was right. He wasn't really mad at the hospital, he was more angry at himself. He should have made her let him in the room. Or he should have posted an officer outside or something. Hell, that slobby uniform he'd met at the crime scene had known she was a flight risk from the get-go. Where the hell had his own instincts gone, he wondered.

The security tapes from the front door finally arrived and they saw Lynn Baker leaving the building wearing hospital scrubs. She turned left, exited the frame of the grainy camera view, and that was the last the saw of her. At least she left on her own, Elliot thought. While he hadn't really believed one of the diner thugs had come and kidnapped her, it had been a possibility he was not looking forward to considering.

"Well, she said before that she wanted to go home." He turned to Benson. "Maybe that's what she did."

"So where's home?"

Elliot realized that he didn't have her address or any contact information. "Damn it. Uh, we didn't actually get that far." At the look he'd been expecting, he snapped back, "Didn't you get that info from the manager?"

Benson shook her head. "Well, somebody must have it. We'll call in for it."

One of the officers had indeed gotten Lynn's particulars from Carelli. However, the address for Miss Lynn Baker didn't actually exist, unless she lived somewhere under the Hudson. Things got more curious when they found that running her social security number through the computer brought up a Gloria Wachowski from Queens, who had died two years before in a car accident.


	2. Chapter 02

Chapter 2 

"I just don't get it. Who the hell is she?" Elliot tossed the paperwork he'd been going through disgustedly on his desk. It's like Lynn Baker doesn't exist."

"Maybe she's on the run from her abuser - a parent, a husband maybe," Olivia guessed.

Her words made sense to Elliot. He nodded. "And the diner hoods? You think that's related?"

She looked thoughtful. "Could be. Revenge? Punishment? It seems like an awfully brutal and public attack for a stranger opportunity rape. The guy went right for her - didn't bother either of the two women customers."

Elliot nodded. "Maybe that's why she wouldn't talk about it. Protecting the creep, even after what he did to her. You know, sometimes I just don't get women."

Olivia looked sharply at him with the "you better shut the hell up now" look that he'd come to know quite well after all the years they'd worked together. She should really trademark the thing, he thought, taking a swig of coffee that was growing cold in his cup.

The sketches of the perps made from the witness descriptions had so far come to nothing, and forensics was still running the physical evidence, although nothing much had turned up.

Stabler had to report their lack of progress to their boss, which hadn't gone all that well either, he thought ruefully. A further discussion with Carelli hadn't shed much light, other than that Lynn had only worked at the diner a few months, she was quiet, did an adequate job, and wasn't particularly friendly with any of the staff or patrons.

"She's always been sort of… odd, I guess you could say," Dino Carelli said, looking like he'd been trying to come up with the right word to describe Lynn. "Quiet. But not meek - she definitely wasn't taking any shit off anyone. She never did get chummy with anybody in the place, even Janey, who's a sweetheart. She just kept to herself. Didn't ever have any friends or family that I saw…"

The Janey in question turned out to be another waitress, an older woman, who wasn't working the night of the robbery. The robbery and assault had obviously hit her hard. She was more than happy to tell the police what she knew, even though it wasn't much. "The only thing Lynn ever told me personal about herself is that she was from Chicago." she said, sniffling a little bit, a tissue clutched in a pale wrinkled hand. "She didn't talk much. Just went outside and smoked on her breaks." She asserted that she had never seen Lynn with anyone, man or woman, heard her talk about anyone, or heard her talk to anyone, other than for her job.

"Did she seem afraid of anything?"

Janey thought for a while, frowning. "She was never scared to work late, I know that. It was great for me because I didn't have to work 'til closing anymore. She'd leave at midnight or one am, bold as brass, just walking down the street all by herself - in this neighborhood! Dino offered to walk her once but she laughed at him."

Didn't sound like someone who was hiding from a psycho husband or stalker, Elliot thought, frowning. Baker continued to be a mystery.

"You know, there was one time she did seem kind of nervous," the older woman said, pursing her lips looking as if she was weighing the decision whether or not to say anything.

"When was that, Ma'am?"

"A couple of your fellows - policemen - in uniforms, though, came into the diner for some coffee one night. Lynn told me she wasn't feeling well and had to use the ladies room. Asked me to serve them even though she usually handled the booths. She didn't come back until after they'd left."

"Did she say anything afterward?"

"No, and I didn't ask. Poor thing did look a bit ill - very pale. This was shortly after she'd started and I didn't want to make trouble for her, so I just forgot about it. I don't know for sure it was because of the policemen. She might have just felt sick."

"Did it ever happen again?" Benson asked.

"No."

"How often do you get cops in the diner?" Stabler asked.

"Oh, not usually. They're normally smart enough to stay out of the place." She chuckled a bit. "Not that Dino doesn't do a fair meatball hero once in a while."

Having seen the diner, Stabler thought it'd be a pretty desperate beat cop to want to spend his dinner break in that place.

----------------------------------------

"That kind of blows the running away from a husband or boyfriend theory," Benson said later when they were going over witness statements. "If she was afraid of the uniforms, that's something else. Sounds like she might be in some kind of trouble." She asked Munch to run Lynn's name and description through outstanding warrants.

The computer search turned up nothing that looked likely, however. The description of the diner assailants remained un-useful as well. Stabler knew that he and Benson were going nowhere fast with the case.

"Detective Stabler?"

He looked up from his paperwork to see a woman from Crime Scene. "Yeah?"

"I got the fingerprint results back."

"Finally. Anything interesting?"

"Well, there were a lot of hits from the offender database. But it's a public diner in a bad part of town. A lot of people have been in there, and, well, you saw it - who knows how long it's been since they've cleaned up the place. Some of these prints could be from ages ago." She handed him a long list.

He looked at the paper. Long was a bit of an understatement. A lot of arrests for petty theft, shoplifting, vagrancy, that sort of thing. A few for more violent crimes - assault, weapons violations. Most of these would just be the clientele that such a greasy spoon would attract. But they'd have to check them all out. Elliot wasn't looking forward to slogging around the city tracking down a hundred lowlifes who probably just stopped in the diner for coffee or a doughnut one morning. But that was the job. With luck, one of those lowlifes would turn out to be the doer. He'd learned a long time ago that anything was possible.

"Thanks. We'll get on these." he set the list down on his desk, wondering how many of these names he could pawn off on Munch and Fin.

"Uh, there's something else." The woman said, hesitantly.

He looked up at the perky brunette in the Crime Scene jacket. Childers, he reminded himself of her name. She was relatively new, he recalled, transferred in from some other city. He'd heard that she did her job well - very professional. He also remembered, a bit uncomfortably, that Olivia had once told him that the new CSU officer was single. Not a true attempt at a fix-up, he knew, just that sort of statement put out there to gauge his interest - whether he was getting on with his life again or not after signing his divorce papers.

"Uh huh?" he asked.

"I, uh, got a hit on a missing kid."

"What?"

"On some prints from the diner." Her face turned a bit red. "Well, it isn't procedure, but I… I always run unknown prints through the missing child database."

"You do?"

"Uh, yeah. It hasn't ever turned anything up. I guess I just always think that maybe one day…" She trailed off.

He looked at her, knowing there was more to this story, and that she wanted to tell it. She had bright blue eyes, he noticed, that contrasted with the dark brown of her hair, which was about the same color as Olivia's.

"My sister disappeared when she was twelve," the woman said, blinking. "We never heard from her again. I mean, I know it's a long-shot. I just figure that maybe one day I'd find her. Or turn up some other missing kid." Her eyes were sad. "I know what it's like to wonder. So I always run the prints. Just in case."

He nodded. "It's a good idea."

"It's a waste of time and resources." She looked guilty at this - spending time and money on something that was so personal. "It's never turned anything up." She shook her head.

"Looks like it did today," he said, taking the piece of paper, scanning it. "Theresa Conner, Age 6, reported missing from Oak Park Illinois, June 8, 1996."

Almost ten years ago, he thought, calculating in his head. That would make her about sixteen today. Why might she be at the diner? Runaways ended up in New York City all the time, but she'd only been six when she'd gone missing.

It was looking like the diner robbery and rape case was growing cold, with an uncooperative missing victim and no leads on the perps, but this, at least there was a chance for something good to come out of this mess of a case, Elliot thought. He asked Munch to find whatever he could about the missing child case.

It was Olivia who first made the connection. "Oak Park."

He looked up, eyebrows raised inquiringly.

"I think that's a suburb of Chicago. And Janey told us that Lynn said she was from Chicago."

Stabler thought a while. "But she'd be sixteen years old. Lynn looked older than that. Twenty or more, I'd guess."

Benson pursed her lips. "But we can't be sure. She could look older. What if Lynn is Theresa? Her parents are probably still looking for her."

Munch's call to the Oak Park police precinct resulted in a blurry fax of a cherubic six-year old girl in jeans and a t-shirt. Stabler and Benson looked closely at it.

"What do you think?" she asked. "I didn't get a close look at her that night. Could it be her?"

Cops get pretty good at recognizing people from photographs, even old ones, and Stabler had been a cop a long time, but he couldn't be sure. Kids changed so much growing up. Brown hair, he saw on the description, might be the same shade. The girl in the photo was plump, though, a far cry from the angular woman he'd interviewed. Still, there was something about the nose that seemed familiar. "I don't know. Could be."

"They'll be emailing us a better picture. Maybe we can have the sketch artist age it."

He squinted again at the black and white photo and the missing child report that had also been faxed. "Went missing at a city park. No real leads. Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard a word. Suspected stranger abduction."

A call to the lead detective on the case, who was luckily available, yielded nothing substantial. "To tell the truth, we expected her body to turn up in a ditch somewhere - just had that feeling, you know? But it never did." Detective Osterweiss said in his bland Midwestern accent.

"You like anybody for it?" Stabler asked.

"Nope," he replied. "We checked out all known sex offenders in the area, looked at anybody we could think of who had access to the kid - teachers, delivery men, neighbors. Big fat goose egg. No evidence, no leads."

"How about the father or another relative?"

"Mom said the father was out of the picture. Said they didn't have any other relatives."

"How is the Mom? Still holding out hope?" Stabler asked.

"I don't know. It's strange. She left town a while after Terri disappeared. We haven't heard from her since."

That's unusual, Elliot thought. Very unusual. Normally the families of kidnapped kids stayed put - as if the kids might someday remember where they lived and show up at the front door. "Sounds like maybe the mom's the doer. You guys consider that possibility?"

"Yeah, we looked at her. She had an alibi - was with some other moms in the park when the kid vanished. And I got the feeling she really cared abut the kid."

"But she left town."

"Yes, but she told us about it. I talked to her around the time she was leaving. Said she couldn't take the memories of the place -" the detective said, "driving past the park every day, having everyone stare at her in the supermarket… She gave us a forwarding address."

He gave Elliot the address they had for Mrs. Julia Connor - in a place called Racine, Wisconsin, although he warned him that the occasional case updates he sent her had started coming back marked No Forwarding a long time ago.


	3. Chapter 03

Chapter 3 

On his way through the Squad room, Elliot passed Munch and Fin, who had a middle-aged decrepit-looking man in ratty clothes between them.

"What's up?" he asked.

Munch stayed behind as Fin took the guy into interrogation.

"We've been down to the SRO by the diner looking for anyone who knows Veronica. And don't think it was easy – sure a bunch of them knew her, but 'Quiet gal, but very nice' and 'She always gave me a refill as soon as my cup was half empty' aren't particularly useful statements for this investigation."

Elliot raised his eyebrows. "So who's the guy?"

"We were getting squat. No, let me rephrase that. Squat would have been an improvement. Would you believe that we couldn't find anyone who had even engaged in a real conversation with her? It's like the girl's a ghost."

"But who's the guy?"

"That, Detective, is Fred. A regular at the diner, although not there for the robbery. I think he had a bit of a crush on his quiet waitress. It's a long shot, but maybe he knows where she lives. So now, if you'll excuse me, I'd best join my partner and seek out what Fred has to tell us."

Stabler followed to watch the interview through the glass. Long shot or not, he didn't have anything better to go on.

"Munch, did you know our friend Fred here followed Veronica home after work last week?" Fin reported as Munch entered the room.

"Is that right?" Munch sat down.

"Stalking is a crime. Did you know that, Fred?"

"I'm no stalker, I swear. I just wanted to see if she lived nearby so I could sort of… arrange to bump into her sometime. Maybe ask her out."

"You know what it's like Fin, so hard to meet anybody in the city," Munch said, jumping into the good cop role.

Fred grinned at Munch, showing several prominent gaps among his stained teeth.

"So, where did you follow her to?" Fin asked, leaning over the seated man, his face hard and serious.

"She only lives a few blocks. I swear, I wasn't doing nothing. I just liked her."

"Stalked her more like."

"So he liked her, is that a crime?" Munch asked.

"He's old enough to be her father. That's sick," Fin replied to Munch and then turned back to glare at Fred. "You like the kiddies do you, Fred?" Then he turned back to Munch again. "He's a pervert, all right. I can smell it from here." He made a loud sniffing sound, swiveling his head as though a bloodhound on a sent, tracking in on Fred.

"Just give us the address where you followed her to," Munch said as Fin continued to sniff toward Fred.

"Look, I'm no perv."

"What, the age difference didn't bother you?" Fin asked in a loud voice, his face now inches away from Fred's. "What street?"

"I think it was forty-ninth. Like I said, I just followed her. I didn't draw a map."

"Have you seen her recently?" Munch asked.

"No. Not for days."

"Are you sure you didn't maybe see her the other night?" Fin circled the table and stopped abruptly behind Fred, leaning over him. "She would have been pretty upset about what happened at the diner. You heard about that, didn't you, Fred?" Fin was getting in his face, looming over the seated man. "Maybe you were sorry you missed the show. Were you sorry, Fred?"

"No, this is crazy." Fred was shaking his head, a bewildered look on his face.

"Fred isn't like that, are you Fred?" Munch countered. "He's going to be a good boy and tell us where he followed her to."

"But… I -"

"I still think he saw her that night," Fin said. "Maybe she needed a shoulder to cry on. Something you'd surely be willing to provide to such a pretty young thing. Is that what happened, Fred? Is that why we can't find her? Did you do something to her, Fred? 'Cause that's what perverts do to little girls, isn't it? That's what happened, Munch. He knew where she lived, heard what happened, and thought maybe he could get himself some."

"No way, I said I haven't seen her in a while!" Fred tried to stand up, but Detective Odafin Tutuola was leaning over him, keeping him trapped in his seat.

"Fred's going to give us the address, aren't you Fred?" Munch asked, although it wasn't really a question.

"Yeah, sure. Anything. I swear I didn't hurt her."

----------------------------------------

At the address Fred had given up, Stabler and Benson found a grubby-looking tenement stood a few blocks south of the SRO. A couple of drug pushers on the corner made them upon their arrival and vanished quickly up a nearby alley. The front door of the building looked like it had been smashed out a while ago, and the hallways smelled like urine, probably from bums sheltering on cold nights. The two detectives found a teenager hanging around who was willing to tell them, for a fiver, that a young brown-haired woman lived in 4B. After a hike up the garbage-strewn stairs, they knocked on the door - it had no number on it, but it was in between 4A and 4C.

Elliot had thought the diner was bad, but it seemed clean, well lighted, and downright luxurious compared to this place.

As if reading his thoughts, his partner murmured, "And she walked home alone to this place in the middle of the night after her shift without being scared?"

He shrugged. For some reason he couldn't picture Lynn Baker showing fear, although he suspected she had felt plenty of it given the level of abuse the doctor had said she'd suffered. That was another thing that he'd learned from his job. When something really really horrible happened to you, it made the just plain bad stuff seem almost normal. What a way to live, he thought sadly.

There was a noise behind the door. Elliot stepped to one side of the doorframe and gestured Olivia to do the same, even though the walls were unlikely to provide much in the way of protection. He placed his hand on his holster. He didn't expect trouble, but in his line of work, he'd learned to plan for every contingency.

He leaned over and knocked loudly. "Police!"

Scuffling noises came from within.

He knocked again. "Come on, police! Open the door!"

More noise and the squealing sound of a stubborn window being wrenched open. It was at least a little fortunate that the walls of the place were thin and un-insulated.

"She's running." He signaled Olivia toward the stairwell and stepped back a couple paces. With a kick to the door just below the knob, the cheap door burst open with a bang. He didn't have a warrant, nor did he think the scuffling noises he'd heard were enough for probable cause, but she was at least an identity thief and a material witness to an armed robbery - maybe that would stand up if he needed it to. And in this building who was to say whether the door was already damaged before he even got there?

Across a gray-looking room with a mattress on the floor, a dirty, un-curtained window stood open. He ran to it and threw himself out onto the fire escape. He raced down the clanging metal stairs hoping the thing wasn't so rusted it would collapse.

When he got to the second floor, he saw that Olivia had the girl. He slowed his pace, jogging down the last flight, dangling down from the ladder, which had been seized with rust, and dropping the remaining few feet onto the ground. He saw Lynn and his partner, both women breathing hard. Olivia had her gun trained on the young woman, who had stopped and was standing with hands raised. He signaled Olivia and she holstered her weapon.

"Lynn! Why are you running away from us?" Elliot asked.

"I thought you were someone else."

"Who?" Olivia queried.

"I don't know. Pushers, pimps... I mind my business. I don't want any trouble."

"And when we said we were cops?"

"Anybody can yell police through a door. I was just protecting myself."

Elliot took her by the elbow. "We need you to come downtown with us."

She tried to pull away.

"We're just trying to help you."

"You can leave me the fuck alone, that's how you can help me!" she spit. "I don't want your help. I don't need your help."

Olivia stepped forward. "Lynn, I know what happened to you in the diner. We want to help you. I understand that you're angry."

"You don't know the half of it, bitch."

"Well, why don't you tell me, then," Olivia said, calmly, her eyebrows lifted and her expression calm and supporting.

It was then that Lynn twisted her arm out of Elliot's grasp and used it to elbow Olivia in the face before turning to run. Before she could get very far, he had her pinned down on the ground, cuffing her hands behind her back.

"You OK?" he called out to Benson, who he saw was holding her hand to her nose.

"I'll be fine. Not even bleeding."

Elliot bent down and spoke into the squirming girl's ear. "You just assaulted a cop - do you know that? What is wrong with you?"

"El, let's just get her back to the squad. We can sort things out there."

He looked up, noticing they had drawn a crowd, and this was not an area where you wanted to be greatly outnumbered by people who might not have their sympathies with law enforcement.

Pulling her upright from her bound hands, Elliot took the young woman to the car and helped her inside, slamming the door after her.

"You sure you're OK, Liv?" He looked at her closely, pulling her hand away from her face to examine it, running his fingers lightly over her smooth and flawless skin. No blood. She looked OK, thank God. He was relieved. That was stupid on his part, to let the girl get loose like that. Thus far, his instincts were proving to be pretty much crap on this case.

"Yeah, fine. She barely touched me. She's just scared, El."

"Don't make excuses for her."

----------------------------------------

Back at the squad room, through the 2-way mirror of the interrogation room, they watched the young woman smoking.

"Did you get her fingerprints yet?" Cragan asked.

"No, she wouldn't give them voluntarily, and she's not under arrest," Benson answered.

Her words made Elliot fume. "She hit you, Olivia. She should be under arrest. Assaulting an officer. Identity theft."

"I'm fine, Elliot," Olivia stated, "and she's a rape victim. She's suffered enough, don't you think?"

"Cap, can't you do something?" He appealed to the kind-faced bald man who had been his superior officer for many years.

"It's Olivia's decision, Elliot," Cragan said firmly.

He turned back to the window. "At least we'd have her fingerprints." He looked at the young woman, thinking that just maybe she looked a little bit scared.

----------------------------------------

Benson and Stabler entered the interrogation room. Lynn didn't look up at them, but kept staring straight ahead.

Elliot threw a leg over the chair opposite her and looked closely at her. He could no longer detect the fear he'd thought he'd seen through the 2-way glass. Maybe he'd imagined it. Now she looked hard. Impassive. Cold. Sort of like she had looked that night in the diner.

He set a can of soda in front of her. "Thought you might be thirsty."

She didn't take it and moved her folded hands away from it.

She knew, he thought, about fingerprints. "There's no smoking in here," he said.

With the rolling of eyes, she stubbed out the cigarette on the table and stuffed the smoldering butt into her jeans pocket, the folded her arms across her chest and sat still with an expectant look on her face.

Benson sat down next to her. "Lynn Baker. Nice name."

"It's not your name, though, is it?" he asked.

She didn't respond.

"And the social security number you were using. It's not yours, either."

There was still no reply. She wasn't even looking at them, he saw, even though he was sitting in her direct line of sight. It was as if she was looking through him - kind of a thousand yard stare. He'd seen it before, in his service in the marines, and also in his SVU work. It sometimes still surprised him how much like a war zone someone's life could be.

"We could arrest you right now for identity theft. That's a pretty serious crime. Not to mention assault on a police officer. You could do some time, you know." Elliot was leaning forward doing his best menacing look. "They'd like a pretty young thing like you in Rikers."

"Look, Lynn," Olivia started, "we want to help you. But you've got to start helping yourself, too."

"Why are we bothering, Benson?" Elliot asked, his voice loud and rough. "She's not worth it. Let the DA put her sorry ass in jail." He pushed the chair back abruptly with a clang and stood up. It was an interrogation technique, and a fairly effective one which he'd used often. Unfortunately the girl didn't seem to be buying it. She kept looking straight ahead, not making eye contact with him, her arms still folded, closing herself off.

"Settle down, Stabler," Benson said to Elliot, who was fuming for show back and forth in front of the table. She turned to Lynn, who still wasn't looking at either one of them. "Is your real name Theresa?" Benson asked.

Elliot thought he noticed a slight eye-flicker at this.

"You see, there were fingerprints in the diner that were from a Theresa Connor. She went missing when she was just a kid," Olivia continued.

"Lynn, how old are you?" Elliot jumped in.

"I want to leave." Her voice was hard, but not quite so hard as it could be, he noticed. And finally, she had spoken. It was a start at least. Those first words were often a turning point.

"We've got some stuff to sort out first, honey," Benson said, leaning in.

"You can't hold me. I was the one who was raped!"

Elliot noticed that his partner looked slightly uncomfortable. Their job was to help victims of sexually based crimes. This mean believing them, supporting them, and catching those who had victimized them. Olivia didn't like it when the lines blurred - when a victim had to be treated as a suspect or as a hostile witness. Sometimes, however, doing their job meant discomfort for those victims they had sworn to help. They had to get at the truth. While it was important that they worked for justice for the victims, their greater role was protection of society as a whole. Getting sexual predators off the streets was sometimes more important than one victim's wishes, as much pain as that occasionally brought.

He caught the shift in her eyes. "Talk to us."

"Can I have another cigarette?" she asked.

"Well, it's not really allowed, but we won't say anything, will we Elliot?"

He watched as Lynn shook a Virginia Slim from the packet with hands that shook just a little bit, and clenched it like a drowning victim might grasp a life preserver. Her fingers had a little trouble working the lighter, so he took it from her and carefully struck the flame. "Nope, we won't say a word."


	4. Chapter 04

"So she's not Theresa?" Cragan asked, having called them from the interrogation room.

Olivia shrugged. "I don't know."

Elliot grinned. "But we will." He held aloft the lighter that he'd received from Lynn to light her cigarette. Handling it carefully, he placed it in an evidence bag and passed it over.

"I'll put a rush on it," the Captain said.

----------------------------------------

An hour later, they weren't all that much further along, and everyone seemed to need a break. Stabler, at least, needed coffee and some non-cigarette-smoke laden air.

Lynn had admitted that her real name wasn't Lynn Baker, but now she was saying it was Denise Bartell. Of Theresa Connor, or of her life before the diner, she had admitted nothing. She had, however, given a slightly more detailed account of the diner assault through several cigarettes and even - Elliot was surprised - a few tears. Maybe she wasn't as tough as she made herself out to be.

"The poor thing looks exhausted," Olivia remarked, as she and Elliot watched through the glass.

Captain Cragan arrived, papers in his hand. His voice was somber. "It's a match. She's Theresa Connor, all right."

"Captain, she's only sixteen years old. She's been in the interrogation room for hours. She's a rape victim. Probably a kidnap victim. We can't keep treating her like this way."

Elliot saw that Olivia's face had turned angry. He had grown to like that his partner was so consistently an advocate for the powerless, even though sometimes it was inconvenient.

"Settle down, Olivia," Cragan replied. "We're trying to help her. And she's seventeen - her birthday was last month."

"Seventeen… sixteen... She's still just a kid!"

"Well, get the kid some dinner and tell her you know who she is. See what she makes of that. I'll see if I can get her a bed in a secure juvenile facility for tonight so she won't have to stay in a holding cell. Don't worry, Liv, we'll get it all sorted out."

Cragan shuffled the papers - he had something other than the fingerprint analysis in his grasp. "These came in from forensics as well - the report and photos from the rape kit."

"DNA?" Elliot asked.

"Yeah, but no hits in the offender database. At least if we do catch this guy, they'll be able to match it." He looked at his detectives, shaking his head. "I know the doc said she had scars from earlier abuse, but I didn't imagine anything like this." He handed a set of photos over.

Elliot hated this part - looking at the photos. The lens of the camera did something… showed a truth that wasn't evident to the naked eye. It was like a soul being stripped bare, something that should be private… not for his eyes. He reached out and took the photo prints from his boss.

Olivia looked on as he shuffled through them. "My god," she breathed. "What kind of sadist did this to that girl?"

The first photo showed scarring on her back that looked like strap marks. The next showed what could only be cigarette burns on her buttocks. A next photos were harder to decipher - long thin lines on an arm, a breast.

"What the hell's that from?" Olivia muttered.

"I saw something similar once on a kid years back. He told us it was from having fiberglass tape stuck down on his skin and then ripped off," Cragan said.

"That's a new one for me," Elliot said, disgusted.

"More burns," Benson noted at the next photo.

"Here are the fresh injuries from the rape – bruising, abrasions... Stomach area where she was pushed against the counter. Inner thighs and genitals from the assault, neck and face where he had a hold of her, abrasion on the chin from the gun barrel."

The medical report itself was not as graphic as the color photographs, but the experienced detectives knew from the few short paragraphs of medical lingo that Lynn had been through some kind of hell for a long time.

"Definite sexual abuse then?" Cragan asked. He'd not had time to read the full report.

"The doc notes scarring of the genitals and vaginal walls that wasn't caused by the rape at the diner. Said it's probably from a while ago."

"A while ago? She's only just seventeen. How old was she when she was abused?" Olivia asked.

"Well, she went missing when she was six. But we don't know. We'll have to get it out of her. The report just says they're not fresh injuries," Elliot responded. The mood was somber and silent as he shuffled the photos and the report back into order. "Uh, they find her family yet?" he asked his boss, who looked relieved to get on a different track.

"Munch is still working on it - nothing so far. Her mother did move to Wisconsin, but the trail's cold from there. He's got computer crimes helping. They'll find her."

A mother leaving town after her kid disappeared, he thought, wasn't like any mother of an abducted kid he'd ever known. Elliot still had them calling him a decade after their kids' cases went cold. Theresa's mom had never followed up on the investigation, according to the Illinois reports. It was very suspicious. Something felt very not right about Julia Connor. "What if…" he started, hesitating a moment as his partner and boss turned to look at him. "What if the mother's responsible?"

"For what?" Olivia asked.

"The abuse. Her disappearance." He rubbed his hand over his chin as he often did while thinking.

Olivia grabbed the photos. "You think her mother did that to her?"

"Come on, Liv, you've seen worse. I know you have. Well, why'd Julia Connor mysteriously vanish after her daughter was abducted? Concerned parents just don't do that. You know they don't. And it's like she's -" he nodded at Lynn through the interrogation window - "protecting someone. Maybe it's Mommy. The doctor said the kid has been abused, physically and sexually. How'd that happen? Maybe Mommy's still around and has had the kid all this time. Or maybe she sold the kid off to a pedophile and hit the road with the dough."

He saw the looks on their faces. "Hey, you know it happens. We don't know anything about the mother. Maybe she's an addict; maybe there was an abusive boyfriend. There's no way to know." He paused and sighed. "We gotta get the girl to talk."

Cragan thought for a moment. "Why don't we get Casey Novak down here first thing tomorrow. See if she can get a search warrant for the girl's apartment. Do it on the identity theft. If her mother is involved, maybe there's something there that'll help us find out."

----------------------------------------

He brought in the tray of food and set it down in front of her.

"Sorry that it's not particularly good. It was the best we could do." He noticed her hesitation. "Go ahead. You must be hungry."

"Can I leave now?" she asked, not moving, not meeting his gaze.

Olivia resumed her seat next to Lynn. "Lynn, we need to tell you something. Just listen to us, please." She paused for a deep breath. "We've been able to verify that your name is Theresa Connor. You are seventeen years old, and you went missing from Oak Park, Illinois ten years ago when you were six."

Lynn blinked. "What?"

"It's true. We've checked your fingerprints." Elliot held up the lighter, still in an evidence bag, hoping that his smile didn't look smug. "We know. And it's OK. Nobody's going to hurt you. You can tell us the truth."

"I didn't say you could have my fingerprints."

"Didn't need to," he replied. "You gave me the lighter."

She looked over at Benson, who gave her a wan smile. "So you might as well have something to eat, honey. You've got to be hungry."

After a moment, with a shrug, Lynn grabbed the soda can that had been sitting in front of her for hours, opened the top, and drank it thirstily. Then she grabbed the sandwich from the tray and ate with large bites.

"I don't know about any Theresa Connor." She chewed through her words, not looking up.

"You're not Theresa?" Stabler asked.

"Nope. Denise."

"So why do you go by Lynn?" Benson asked.

The girl shrugged.

"Are you hiding from someone?"

A headshake and more chewing was all that came from the girl. Elliot noticed that her table manners were not particularly good. But perhaps she didn't feel the need for politeness in the stark gray interrogation room.

He reached across the table and took hold of the hand holding the sandwich. "Who hurt you?"

Shaking off his hand, she spat the words at him, "Those guys in the diner. You know that. Everybody and their brother got to watch him fuck me. Put on quite a show. Bet you wish you were there to watch, don't you? Is that why you won't leave me alone?"

"Honey, we know that someone's been hurting you for a long time. The doctor at the hospital told us. We've seen photos of your scars." Olivia's voice was gentle. She gave her partner a look that he read as "lay off a bit."

The girl's chewing stopped, and she held the sandwich, frozen midway between the table and her mouth for a moment, and then dropped it dismissively on the tray. "I'm tired. I want to go home now."

"We're getting you a place to stay right now. It won't be long."

"I've already got a place to stay."

What a place, Elliot considered. A fourth-floor one-room walk-up with papier-mâché walls, drug dealers on the corner, and bums pissing in the hallways. Home sweet home. If she wants to go back there, then she really doesn't want to be here.

"I know you do, honey," Olivia told her. "But we've got a nice place for you for tonight. Then we'll talk some more tomorrow after you've had some rest."

He looked at his partner, incredulous. The girl was close to cracking. Another hour or two and he was sure he could get her to cough up the whole story. "Uh, Detective, can I see you outside?"

"Sure." She smiled at Lynn. "We'll be right back. Go ahead and finish your sandwich. Do you want something else? Another soda or something?"

He hustled his partner out the door.

Once the door shut behind them, she yanked her elbow from her partner's guiding hand with a glare.

Elliot was livid. "What the hell was that, Liv?"

"She's tired, Elliot. Can't you see that?"

"Of course I can. That's why we have to keep her here. She'll crack, I know she will."

"She's shutting down, El. I can see it. She's not going to tell us anymore tonight. Giving her a break will reinforce trust. She's got to trust us in order to talk to us. Don't worry, it'll come."

"What the hell?" He shook his head with disgust.

Her face grew stern and the tone of her voice lowered. "She is not a criminal, Elliot. You saw those photos and read the medical report. She's a victim. And she's just a kid. We've been interrogating her for hours without a parent or advocate. I won't put her through that anymore tonight."

He took a breath, held it, and released it - feeling his anger softening a little under Olivia's steady gaze. He shrugged. He could never stay mad at his partner very long.

----------------------------------------

"Well, I can probably get a warrant on the identity theft. But the case likely won't hold up because the identity theft victim is dead and the girl didn't use the identity to defraud," ADA Casey Novak said, looking at the paperwork. "I don't think I'd want to prosecute anyway, after all you say she's been through."

"It's OK. We just need the warrant to try to find out what's going on with her," Elliot said.

"No word on the diner perps?"

He shook his head. "Not a peep. Nothing from the descriptions, no prints... Nothing very traceable was stolen. Munch and Finn are wearing out their shoe leather canvassing, but so far…" He shrugged. It was one of those cases that just had that feeling. If the diner robbery and assualt wasn't related to the grand mystery of Lynn/Denise/Theresa, then Elliot figured they wouldn't solve it unless the bastards tried it again.

"So what's your theory on this kid?" Novak sounded curious.

"Theory?" Elliot asked. "I wish we had a theory. All we've got is questions. As Munch would say, she's a riddle, wrapped in mystery, inside an enigma."

"Hey now, it wasn't me that said that, you know. It was Winston Churchill. And he was talking about Russia, not about some brat who's lying to us." Munch's nasal voice was followed shortly by his appearance, joining them at Benson's desk.

"She's a victim, not a brat." Olivia looked stern. "So you got anything?"

"Nothing new on the diner, except the thugs did get away with a couple wedding rings with engraving that might be recognizable if they turn up. Unlikely, but we've got a notice out to the friendly neighborhood pawnshops. Also got a something on the Mom."

"Yeah?"

"I got a hold of a former neighbor of Mrs. Connor in Racine, Wisconsin. Said she lived next door to her for a few months in the dairy state, which by the way is something of a misnomer. The grand poobah of the dairy industry in terms of quantity has been California for quite some time."

"Just tell us what you found out, Munch, OK?" Olivia said.

"She didn't really know Connor very well. Said she chatted with her across the mailboxes a couple times, about the weather, how the Green Bay Packers were doing, that kind of heartland thing. Said the Connor woman seemed nice enough, although sad. Oh, and she never saw a kid with her."

"So Theresa really was missing."

"Guess so."

"Still doesn't mean the Mom wasn't responsible," Elliot insisted. Something felt wrong to him about this Connor woman.

"But does she know where Connor went?" Olivia asked.

Munch shook his head. "There in the heart of the dairy state, the trail doth grow cold. Well it's not actually the heart of the state; Racine's on the lake, so it'd be the edge of the state. Did you know that Lake Michigan was called 'Lake of the Stinking Waters' by the native population before it was renamed Michigan?"

"Whatever." Elliot rolled his eyes. "Let's move on that warrant."


	5. Chapter 05

Chapter 5 

It didn't take long for Novak to charm a judge for the warrant, and shortly thereafter, she, Stabler and Benson left for the tenement. Stabler had suggested Munch and Finn stay behind, and they also wouldn't need any uniforms as they often used in searches because "It's one room - you can hardly swing a cat in there." After enduring a brief discourse from Munch about how the cat in that saying referred to not a feline cat, but a type of whip, they were off.

The same dealers were on the corner, but Stabler noticed that this time despite making them for cops, they didn't depart. Punks, he thought. "If we have time later, let's roust them."

"We're not here for that, Elliot," Benson said.

The tenement looked even more grey and dingy in the wan morning light. The hallways still smelled like piss. They found the manager, luckily, who, after complaining about having to fix the door that Stabler had kicked in, gave them the key but didn't bother to accompany them upstairs.

"I didn't hear that." Novak said at the news of Elliot's exuberance with the door. "And I certainly don't ever want to hear about anything like that in the future."

The three trudged up the garbage-strewn stairs. On the third floor, a young child, probably three or four years old and dirty-looking, played with an empty milk carton and cigarette butts on the floor.

"Hi, honey." Olivia Benson squatted down. "What's your name? Are you all alone? Is your mommy around?"

A nearby door opened. "You leave that child alone." An older African-American woman, heavy-set, in a faded flowery housecoat and slippers, stood in the doorway holding what looked like a piece of broom handle.

Stabler pulled his badge. "Hey now, put that down."

The woman did, dropping the broom handle at her feet.

"This kid belong with you?"

"No, but I keep an eye on her, because her worthless drunk of a mama won't do it." The woman thrust out her chin.

"And where is her mother?"

"Oh she's in there." She nodded toward the door opposite. But she's up drinking and such till all hours and she doesn't like the kid to disturb her sleepin'. Sends her outside to play. In this neighborhood, can you believe that?"

"Ma'am, we'll see what we can do for her. I'm sure child protective services would be able to do something."

"I'm no rat," the woman said, backing up into her apartment.

"Of course you're not," Benson jumped in. "You're just concerned. We don't even have to mention your name if you don't want us to. We'll just say we found her unattended in the hallway."

"Well, then, that's all right. I mean, I do care about the child, but I still have to live here. Can't be stirrin' up no trouble."

"Ms, uh," Stabler started.

"Lemley, Rita Lemley."

"Miss Lemley, did you know the young woman who lived upstairs in 4B? Brown hair, thin, worked at a diner a few blocks down?" Elliot asked as his partner separated the toddler from the cigarette butts.

"Oh that child? Well, I seen her. Talked to her once or twice when she had a mind to. Poor thing."

"Poor thing? Why do you say that?"

"Well, she didn't have much now did she. She moved in here a few months back and I could tell that it was all she could do to pay the rent, you know. But I think she worked hard. I'd hear her coming up the stairs real late from her job."

"Did she say anything else - where she was from, maybe? If she knew anybody around here? Did you ever see her with anyone?"

"That gal was all alone. Never saw her with anyone, never heard her talk about anyone. She was pretty quiet. Never told me nothing' personal."

"Have you seen her lately?"

"Last time I saw her the other morning. She looked pretty much done in, she did. A big bruise on her neck, and she seemed like she wasn't feeling too good."

That had to be the morning after the diner attack, Elliot realized.

"I brought her up some soup, because I could tell she wasn't feeling well. It made her cry, though, poor thing. I just sat down next to her - which I can tell you is a trick because I'm not as young as I used to be and all she has is a ratty old mattress - I just sat with her. She had the soup, smoked what was probably a whole pack of cigarettes, and drank near half a bottle of cheap vodka - I don't hold with drink naturally, but the poor thing looked like she was pretty frazzled. After a while, she just nodded off to sleep."

"Did she say anything?"

"She said something about having to get out of here. That somebody was hassling her. Didn't want them in her business. Poor thing, she's not in any trouble now, is she?"

"We're trying to help her."

"Well, I can't believe that child would hurt a fly."

"So she never told you anything about herself or her past?" he asked.

The woman thought for a moment. "Well, that morning she was pretty out of sorts. Right before she fell asleep - or maybe she was asleep - or drunk, I don't know, her eyes were kind of closed and she had a real strange look on her face - she said 'How come I can never get rid of you, Frank?' Or something like that. For a minute I thought she was telling me off, but I'm pretty sure at that point that she didn't even know I there."

Frank, Stabler wondered. Who the hell was Frank? He asked Rita this, but she had no answers only to say that she didn't think there was anyone named Frank living in the building. He didn't remember anyone named Frank from the diner, either.

The detectives took down Rita's particulars, and the uniformed officer that Benson had called in arrived to stay with the toddler until CPS showed up. Benson, Stabler, and Novak climbed up one more flight to the fourth floor where apartment 4B's unmarked door stood.

Stabler motioned Novak to stand to one side of the doorframe as a precaution. He knocked on the door, and then used the key.

It took only a second for him to verify that the small room and bathroom (if a room without a bath or shower could truly be called such, he pondered) were empty. They began their search.

"Look at this," Olivia called after a few minutes rummaging through a duffel bag thrown into a corner. In it was what looked like a school assignment, marked with an A and the name Denise on top. "So she was telling the truth about going by Denise. It's a history report, maybe fifth or sixth grade level. Looks like she's a pretty smart - got an A."

After several more minutes of searching, Stabler unearthed what at this point felt to him like a jackpot. A kids-size shoebox. He pulled it into the light of the grimy window and shook it slightly. Setting the box on the window ledge he started carefully looking through the things. "Looks like some personal stuff. Got a buffalo nickel… a pin shaped like a cat… a luggage key… some kind of pressed flower card thing… hello, what's this?" In a small fabric pouch he found a gold locket. Inside there was no photo, but there was an engraving. He read it out loud. "You'll always belong to me, Daddy."

"Theresa's mom never mentioned her father to the Illinois cops," Benson said, looking at the locket. "Said he wasn't in the picture."

"So who's Daddy then?"

"It doesn't have to mean anything. Maybe she found it? Bought it in a pawn shop?"

"Could be." But something about the thing told Stabler it was hers. Maybe because it was hidden. Wrapped up. He continued to look through the box. "I think I got a photo." He pulled it out. It was a photo, or rather it was half a photo, folded up. It showed what Stabler thought certainly was a young Theresa, wearing a bathing suit and looking surly. "Must be about fourteen here, don't you think?"

Benson nodded.

It looked like the young girl wasn't the only subject of the photo, The left arm of someone was wrapped around her shoulders, torn through in the photo at about the rotator cuff. "So who else is this in the photo?" he asked.

Benson peered at it closely. "From the size of the hand and arm, I'd say it's an adult male. Maybe it's 'Daddy.'"

There wasn't anything immediately identifiable about the hand - no tattoos, no rings. Stabler took in the girl's image. She looked like she might be trying to shrug off the arm around her shoulder. It didn't necessarily mean anything. Kids, he well knew, could suffer from unpredictable moods. Just the other day, he'd taken Dickie for a haircut, which turned out to be not so much the father/son bonding experience he'd hoped for. Instead, Dickie had sat in the chair and glared at him the whole time.

"What's that in the background?"

She looked again. "Looks like some kind of business sign. It's torn through, but the last part is still readable. "E L D apostrophe S Marina. Something -elds Marina. I wonder if we can trace it. Could be anywhere."

"The girl can tell us."

"I'm not so sure she will," Olivia replied.

"What? You were the one who let her leave last night. I could have gotten her to talk."

"Look at the way she lives, Elliot. She's all on her own. She doesn't have any friends, hasn't confided in anyone. Someone's abused her for years - I doubt we can get her to trust us this fast. The identity theft isn't going to be much leverage. If we could find her Mom, maybe…"

"Come on, Liv. She's a kid. She'll talk."

She shrugged. "Maybe."

The rest of the search turned up only ratty clothes, a couple candy bars, a few toiletries, and a half-filled book of Sudoku puzzles. There was nothing much in the apartment that couldn't fit in the duffel bag and be carried away, other than the mattress, which itself looked like it had seen many owners. "Definitely a flight risk," he said. "We've got to hold onto her until this is sorted out."

Novak shook her head. "The identity theft charge won't hold up for that."

"Material witness on the robbery then."

"I can't believe we're treating her like a perp. Elliot, she's a victim," Olivia complained.

He turned to her. "Liv, yes, she's a victim, but she's up to her neck in something here. We can't let that go. What if the diner was related to whatever it is that's going on here? Those punks could come back for more, maybe kill her this time. We've got to get to the bottom of this."

"I'm not saying we don't investigate. But we need to tread carefully with her, Elliot. We're investigating an assault. She is not a criminal."

"Other than the identity theft and hitting you, you mean," he retorted.

"She didn't hurt me. It's obvious that she's scared and hiding from something. She didn't use that social security number to steal, she used it to survive."

They took the box of personal items and left the rest, locking the door behind them. Back on the third floor, a loud altercation was going on between a woman wearing a CSP ID badge and a hung-over-looking woman who was grasping the toddler they'd found. The uniformed officer stood between the two and looked glad to see the detectives as they arrived.

"She don't want us to take the kid," he said, nodding at the mother.

"Goddamn right, I don't!" the woman yelled. "She's mine. I take care of my baby."

"By leaving her alone in a stairwell playing with garbage?" Benson stepped in.

With a squeal, the woman lunged, causing a scrum with the four cops, the CPS worker, the toddler, and the mother in the narrow hallway. As Elliot tried to subdue the flailing woman he wondered why this job was never easy.


	6. Chapter 06

Chapter 6 

It took the cops and Casey Novak the better part of an hour to sort through the mess with the toddler, and none of them were in the best of moods upon returning to the squad room.

As Elliot and Olivia finished filling Cragan in on the search warrant results, Munch and Fin arrived.

"While you all were having fun, we were doing some more leg-work." Finn said, holding up a black woman's handbag.

"It doesn't go with your outfit, Fin," Elliot joked.

"Shows what you know," he retorted. "Black goes with everything."

Munch said, "We went back to the diner. Her handbag was there, in a locker. She never went back to get it."

"Well I can't blame her for not going back there after what she went through," Benson stated.

"Why didn't Crime Scene pick it up?" Elliot asked, flaring a bit.

"The lockers were in the back. The perps never went back there, so it wasn't considered part of the crime scene. The cops didn't think to pick up her stuff that night," Munch answered, "and she never asked for it."

"She had other things on her mind, like having just been assaulted," Benson pointed out.

Fin, his hands gloved, pulled out a wallet. "We got an ID. New York, Lynn Baker. Looks like her picture." He displayed the card, holding it up to the light. "It's a good fake. Not like the ones kids usually get in order to try the bar scene. Might be able to trace it." He shrugged.

"Anything else in the purse?" Stabler asked.

"Four dollars and fifty six cents," Munch said reading from the list he'd compiled, "three packs of cigarettes, two lighters, a bottle of generic aspirin, and a knife."

"Knife?"

"Oh yeah." Fin reached into the bag again and pulled out a large switchblade and clicked it open. The carbon steel of the blade reflected the fluorescent light of the squad room.

"Big knife for a little girl," Munch said, pursing his lips.

"Did you see the neighborhood she was at? Probably got it for protection," Fin said. "Too bad she didn't have it when those diner creeps got ahold of her. Wouldn't bother me a bit – one or two less cretins to deal with."

Elliot leaned in for a closer look. It was indeed a very large and very sharp-looking knife. He couldn't imagine tiny Lynn Baker wielding it. "Well, she didn't use it in the diner incident, but maybe she did somewhere else. There's something on the blade." He pointed with his pinky finger, careful not to touch. Maybe it was rust or just dirt, but it definitely looked like something to him.

"Send it to the lab," Cragan said. "John, Fin, start trying to trace the ID and anything from the stuff Benson and Stabler brought back from the search." He turned. "You and Olivia pick up the girl for another round. Bring in Huang, maybe he can give us some insight about how to deal with her."

--------------------------------------

Dr George Huang perused the fairly thin file of paperwork, lingering over the photos.

Elliot watched, not envying the shrink. Those photos were enough to rip your guts out. It was easy to see that while Huang didn't like to look at them, his professional interest was tweaked.

"It's pretty likely she was in the control of a sexual sadist. The extent of the damage looks like it was imposed over a period of years. You can kind of see how some of the scars on her body appear to have stretched or distorted as her physical body developed. This likely started when she was pretty young."

"When she went missing?" Elliot surmised.

"I can't completely rule out abuse before then. But you're right. I believe she was probably abducted by a sadist molester pedophile."

"Or the mom sold her to one."

"Yes, it's possible," Huang sighed. "But that's not statistically likely. Abduction is more likely. In either case, the end result is the same. She's probably lived the majority of her life suffering terrible abuse."

"Do you think it's still going on?"

Huang shook his head. "I don't think so. What you describe about how she's living indicates that she's alone."

"So how do we get her to talk? She knows she's Theresa, but she won't admit it. She hasn't said one word about any part of her life before the night of the diner rape."

Huang leaned against the wall, the file still open in his hand. "She fears police involvement. That's not unusual with severely abused kids - abusers condition them to keep quiet and so they won't spill to authority figures. She may have been told that the police will hurt her or her family if she talks."

"She not six years old now, Doc," Elliot said. "And if you're right she's not with this abuser now. Why would she still believe that crap?"

"What a child learns in their formative years is very important. She may rationally know something, but be unable to prevent the learned behavior to override it, irrational as it may be. She's had to survive for a long time. Her defense mechanisms have enabled her to do so. It's not unusual that she wouldn't give up that which has enabled her to survive."

"So can you tell us anything about her that we don't know, based on that information?"

"Well, I think given her life now - the fact that she's been working a steady job, has a clean tox screen, has made a home for herself -"

If you can consider a one-room slum tenement a home, Elliot thought.

" - indicates that it's likely she's only regained her freedom relatively recently. Any younger, and I suspect she would have turned to drugs or been nabbed by some other victimizer, possibly forced into prostitution. I believe she's intelligent as well - the schoolwork you found shows book smarts - so she's been to school, at least through probably the eighth grade level. She's smart enough to find and hold down a job, and keep herself out of the hands of pimps, pushers, and other trouble. Due to her intelligence, you may find it difficult to trick or trap her when you're interviewing. She's survived living with a sadist for a number of years, so she has to have learned how to read people, and she'll probably be a good actress as well."

"Why doesn't she want us to find the guy who raped her?" he asked.

"I can only guess. It's possible, as you suspect - that she knows the person who assaulted her and is protecting that person, either through fear of reprisal, or through some kind of relationship she's had with him. However, it's as likely that she doesn't know her attacker."

"If she doesn't know him, then why won't she cooperate?" he demanded.

"It's probably a combination of reasons. She suffered through being raped and abused countless times as a child. She may feel like this is another horror to be endured quietly - a tactic that enabled her to survive before. She probably has low self-esteem, so she may not feel deserving of the attention that the investigation is bringing. She may not feel she deserves justice. And her fear of the police is probably a factor as well."

"If she'd just cooperate - "

"But you're forgetting, Elliot, she has cooperated with you - to the least extent possible - but she has cooperated. She permitted the rape kit. She gave descriptions. There's a part of her that wants help."

"But why won't she admit she's Theresa?"

"She may not remember being Theresa."

Elliot was surprised. "She wasn't that young when she was taken - she should remember something."

"Given the abuse, it's possible that she's repressed those memories, either due to threats made by the abductor, or even because memories of a previous normal life are too painful given what she suffered."

Olivia asked, "How should we proceed, doctor?"

"Maybe you should talk to her." Elliot suggested to Huang.

Huang thought about that for a moment. "I don't think it's the right time for that. My presence may be deemed another intrusion by an authority figure - force her to withdraw even more. I think that you and Olivia should proceed - she knows you, you've developed a relationship with her - but be careful. Don't push too hard. Don't hide what you know from her if you can help it, she'll probably detect that and it will only make her more suspicious of you. Trust is the key here. You've got to build it. You've got to appeal to her rational mind so that it can override the fear and mistrust she's still living with."

"Build trust? Come on, Doc, I was within minutes of getting her to crack last night."

"Maybe, but I doubt it. Look at her." He jerked his chin at the window. "The body language, posture, her defenses are up."

"Sure, now. But last night I got her to talk about the rape." He knew he could have cracked her.

"But she knows that you know all about the rape already from the diner witnesses. Giving you that information didn't cost her anything, but it allowed her to maintain the illusion that she was cooperating. It's a tactic that she's probably employed well in the past - teachers or friends who get too close - even against the person who was abusing her." Huang perused one page of the file again. "Did her demeanor change yesterday? Did she become emotional? Maybe cry a little?"

"Yeah, so?" Elliot asked.

"I suspect it was an act. Kids who are manipulated like that learn manipulation themselves. Psychologically she's had to be extremely tough. She's had to endure the nearly unimaginable. A few hours in a room with you isn't going to faze her. Not when she's gone through what she has." He shook his head.

Elliot frowned. Could it be true? Had she played him? Granted, he'd felt a step behind on this entire case. He didn't like to think it, but maybe it was true. He'd been suspicious of Huang's abilities when he'd first started working with SVU, but over the years the Asian psychiatrist had been proven right far more often than wrong. Elliot trusted him.

Huang shut the file and handed it over. "You might get her to talk, eventually, but it'll take a while to build trust to that level, and you may never get there."

"No other way?" Stabler asked.

"Well…" Huang's face looked reluctant.

"Well, what?"

"There's a chance you could get her to crack if you take on some of the characteristics of the sadist."

"What?" Stabler was surprised.

Huang explained. "She was held in total control by this sadist for probably a decade. Very likely into an age where she should have known how to escape or obtain help. Yet she submitted to his will and to the abuse. He controlled her - dictated her very existence. It's possible that if you take on enough of those characteristics, put her back into that place where you're in total control, scare her, that she'll intuitively do what you tell her. I don't recommend it, it'd be extremely hard to pull off, and mentally it could be damaging to her."

"We're not going to do that," Olivia assured Huang, her eyes turned toward Elliot. "Like I keep saying, she's a victim, not a perp."

Elliot was silent for a moment, thinking. "This may be the end of the case, then," he told his partner. "We're obviously not going to become sadists, and we can't spend the next decade building trust, not when there are hundreds of victims out there that actually want our help." At the look from Olivia, he added, "I'm sorry, Liv. I feel for the girl, but I'm not sure we'll be able to help her."


	7. Chapter 07

Chapter 7 

"Preliminary results do show blood on the knife. Unfortunately, it's so preliminary they don't know if it's human. She could have just used the knife to cut up a steak or something," Fin reported.

Having seen the very large and lethal-looking switchblade, Elliot doubted Lynn would have used it for anything other than serious business.

"But I do have something interesting on the photo." Munch said, holding it out. "E L D apostrophe S Marina. Sure it could be anywhere, but I figured I'd check out all the Marinas in New England and on Lake Michigan, locations around where we know Theresa lived. If the place is still in business then there're only a couple of matches. There's Berkeld's Marina down the Jersey Shore, near Wildwood, and Oscar Rhingeld's Marina just south of Chicago, in Indiana. Since we're probably not going to get budget approval for a flyer to the Midwest on this one, I thought we might want to start with the Jersey Shore."

"Maybe she can shed some light. Give me the photo," Stabler said. As Benson started to follow, he turned, "Give me a few minutes alone with her, Liv." At her somewhat doubtful look, he assured her, "Come on, I'm a pussy cat."

He entered the room alone. "Hi Theresa."

She didn't look up at him.

He sat down next to her. "We found this picture in your stuff. That's you, isn't it?"

She didn't look at the proffered photo. "I didn't say you could go through my stuff. And my name's not Theresa."

"We had a search warrant. Where was the photo taken?"

She folded her arms.

"OK, who's the guy you were with?"

She said nothing.

"Come on, who's the guy? Is it the guy who hurt you? You tore him out of the photo. Must have hated him pretty good."

She was still and silent.

"Lynn, Denise, Theresa - whatever you want to call yourself," he leaned closer to her, his large frame dwarfing her small one, his face close enough that he knew she could feel his breath against her ear. He kept his voice low and quiet. "We know what that bastard did to you. He doesn't deserve you covering for him, you know. Not after all those years of pain and torment. How old were you when he first raped you?"

She blinked at his last question, but then recovered. "I'm not Theresa, and I'm not covering for anyone. Leave me the fuck alone!"

"Where did you live before you came here?"

"Around."

"Who did you live with?"

"My father."

The father again, Stabler thought. Was it her real father or the sadist? Or, he thought for the first time, maybe the two were the same? "What's your father's name?"

"Bartell."

The same name she'd used, at least part of the time. "What's his first name?"

She shrugged. "I called him Dad."

"You don't know your father's name?"

She shrugged again.

"Where is he now?"

"Around."

"He your real father?"

She shrugged.

"And where's your mother?"

"Dead."

"What was your mom's name?"

She shrugged.

"Got any pictures of her?"

She shook her head.

"Is this your father's arm around you in this picture?" He held up the photo again.

She didn't respond.

"Jersey Shore's real nice, did you live out there?" He looked closely at her, doubting that she would respond to his question verbally, but he'd been a cop a long time. It was there, a slight twitch in the muscle of her jaw. Yep, Jersey it was.

"Stay put, I'll be back."

Stabler exited the room. Munch, Fin and Benson were watching from outside. "Yep, Jersey Shore. You guys mind checking it out?" he asked Munch and Fin, handing over the photo.

"Too bad I don't have my swim trunks," Munch said.

"It's Jersey, not Miami, be glad you don't have them," Fin said. "Yeah, we up for a road trip."

"Au contraire, my friend," Munch countered. "Thousands recreate in the lovely sands of the Jersey Shore every summer. The beaches are much better nowadays. Ever since New Jersey took our fair state to court to pay to clean up all our garbage washing ashore."

"Still don't mean that I ever want to see you in a bathing suit," Fin grunted and they departed.

----------------------------------------

Benson picked up the packet of things from Lynn's apartment and entered the room. It was her turn, she'd told Elliot, asking him to wait outside. He wasn't pleased, but sometimes a tag-team approach worked. He sat down on the edge of the table and watched through the two-way glass.

"Hi Theresa," Olivia smiled and sat down.

"I'm not Theresa"

"Denise?"

"I like Lynn."

"OK. Lynn then. How are you doing? Can I get you anything?"

"Why am I here?" the girl asked. "I want to leave."

Benson put her hand on Lynn's arm. "I'm sorry, honey. We're just trying to help you. We want to catch the people that hurt you. The men in the diner, and, well, the man who was hurting you before."

"I want to leave," she repeated.

"I know you do. I just want you to know that we're on your side. We're only keeping you here to try to help you."

"I don't need your fucking help."

"I know you don't. You got by without anyone, through that hell for a long time. But now don't you want some help? Don't you want these guys punished for what they did to you? We can put them in prison if you help us."

"I just want to be left alone."

Benson smiled. "I know, honey, I know."

"I'm not your honey. Don't act like you care about me."

"I do care."

A snort was the only reply.

"Look here, I've got some of your things from your apartment. I thought you'd want to have them safe with you."

That was smart, Elliot thought, watching Olivia work through the glass. That box was mostly junk, but it seemed like everything the girl had in the world. Giving it back to her would surely generate some degree of trust. Everything had been photographed, dusted for prints, and catalogued, so giving it to her wouldn't harm the investigation.

The girl took the box and looked through it.

"Everything's there except the picture. Look here. Here's you locket." Benson reached in and pulled out the cloth bag, and opened it. "See, it's safe and sound."

Lynn's eyes grew wider at the sight of the gold necklace, and even through the glass, Elliot could see she shied away slightly, her gaze not leaving the hand that held the locket.

"I read the engraving on it. 'You'll always belong to me, Daddy.' That's nice. Did your father give you this?" She asked.

Lynn shrugged.

"My mother gave me this necklace, see?" Benson reached into her shirt collar and pulled out the pendant necklace she often wore. "I wear it a lot. Do you wear yours?"

Lynn shook her head. She was still looking at the locket clasped in Benson's hand.

"Does 'You'll always belong to me' have any special meaning?" Benson asked.

"No. Can I go now?" Lynn looked away.

"Let's talk some more."

Stabler watched from the window, taking note of Lynn's reaction to the necklace and Benson's questions about it. He wished Huang was still here to help him figure her out. She had certainly shut down after that, no longer looking at Benson or at the necklace. No longer responding to Benson's questions. She had her arms crossed and was looking down at the table. Something about the necklace had shut her down. He recalled the inscription. "You'll always belong to me." Now that was a message that could have a double meaning.

Was 'Daddy' the sadist? Was the locket a sign of his power over her - you'll never escape because you'll always belong to me. But if she had escaped him, why had she kept the necklace? Wouldn't she leave it behind as a symbol that she had escaped him? Maybe she'd take it with her as proof of her strength - to look at it and know that this man no longer had power over her. If only they knew who Daddy was.

It looked like Benson wasn't getting very far. The girl was back to smoking with sharp hostile movements. He watched and waited.

An hour later, Stabler was getting bored outside the interrogation room. Watching his partner continue to treat Lynn with kid gloves was proving to be coma inducing. The girl remained mute. He rubbed his eyes and took another swig of the coffee that had grown cold long ago. He thought back over the case. Abducted or otherwise gone missing at age six from a suburb of Chicago, turned up at age 17 working at a local greasy spoon. Mother disappeared, abductor God only knows where. Did she escape? Was she running from the man who had abducted her? The use of an alias indicated she was hiding from someone.

Medical evidence showed signs of physical and sexual abuse for most or all of those missing years, but they had no other info about her life at that time. Except a photo indicating that she'd been in New Jersey at some point - probably around age fourteen. She had no material possessions except a shoebox holding a few trinkets - no friends, nobody close to her. She said her mother was dead and she didn't know where her father was.

The girl was uncommunicative and uncooperative, and had tried to run. Did she not believe they were trying to help her? He scratched his eyelid, an unconscious gesture he made when he was concentrating. Only a few days ago she'd been attacked - raped in front of the patrons of the restaurant she worked at. She'd been treated inhumanly - forced to perform a sex act on a gun barrel, violated by that gun and by the man who held it, threatened with death several times… Yet she had been uncooperative every step of the investigation and seemed to have no concern that her attacker be caught.

That diner attack was brutal, he thought, but remembering the photos of the girl the medical staff had taken, it was no more brutal than what she had already survived, already endured. Was the diner rapist related to her previous life or just some random creep? The diner guy couldn't be the sadist kidnapper; witnesses put his age too young. A guy who kidnapped a girl ten years ago would likely be a lot older. How old, he wondered. It generally took violent pedophiles a while to work up the nerve and skill to pull off something like Theresa's abduction. The guy who snatched Theresa - if that's what happened - had left no trace. Elliot suspected he'd be in mid forties at least by now, an experienced pedophile - definitely not the much younger diner rapist. It didn't mean the diner rapist wasn't involved, though, but he had no idea how.

His mind turned back to his long frustrations with this case. He rubbed his forehead, thinking, looking at the girl behind the glass. She was tough… Hard… Uncooperative… She hadn't believed they wanted to help her.

Didn't she think she deserved any better than to be abused and assaulted? Huang had suggested as much. The girl had at least been to school, indicating she'd had some measure of freedom, and yet she hadn't obtained help for herself. What kind of hold did her abuser have on her? Was he still in the picture? It didn't seem so. She seemed alone.

The questions he had about this case far exceeded the answers. He'd worked a lot of tough cases in his days, so having more questions than answers wasn't an uncommon situation, but it was a frustrating one. He examined the girl through the window - slim and small, her brown hair tied up in a ponytail, wearing ill-fitting clothes that CPS must have found for her. He squinted, moving closer. He wanted to see her eyes - the eyes that he'd read as someone much older than seventeen when he'd first seen her in the diner. The distance and bad lighting of the interrogation room prevented him getting the view he wanted, but he remembered her eyes.

"Fresh coffee?" Cragan held a cup out to him.

Elliot shook his head to clear the jumble of thoughts from his brain, surprised at his boss's sudden appearance before him. "Thanks. I could use it." He took the cup and drank. Nothing like squad room coffee - if you liked your acid harsh and cheap, that is, he thought, although at least it was hot and a jolt of caffeine rarely went amiss in his line of work.

"Any progress?"

"Not really. Did you hear anything from Munch and Fin yet?"

Cragan looked at his watch. "No, I'll bet they haven't even gotten to the marina yet. It's going to take them a while to get across town, over the bridge, and that far down the coast. And it's Friday - there'll be weekend traffic."

"Did Huang stop by to see you?"

Cragan nodded. "I've got something back from the lab that you should hear. Let's pull Olivia out. Looks like they could both use a break."

Through the window, Elliot saw that Lynn was resting her head on folded arms on the table, ignoring Benson.

Cragan knocked on the door.

"Yeah, Cap?" Benson said, coming out and shutting the door behind her.

"The blood on the knife. It is human. No DNA matches so far, but the lab's still running checks."

"So she has stabbed someone," Stabler said.

"Or she cut herself on it," Olivia replied.

"No, no match to her DNA from the rape kit. The blood belongs to a male, type O," Cragan told them.

"She could have bought or found the knife on the street. The blood could be anyone's. Could be unrelated," she argued.

"Yeah, maybe." Elliot said, not trying to keep the doubt from his voice.

"She still keeping stum?" Cragan asked.

"Yep, totally shut down. Hell, I think she's asleep in there."

Elliot could tell that even his partner's normally unlimited patience was wearing slightly thin with Lynn.

"We knew it wouldn't be easy. Take a break." Cragan sighed. "Let's see if Munch and Fin turn up anything. Check back with forensics, too. Maybe they've got a hit on the DNA by now."

"Captain, she's been in there for hours," Olivia said. "I think we should send her back to CPS for the time being."

"She's our only source of information," Elliot argued.

"El, she's exhausted. She's only seventeen years old. How would you feel if it was Maureen or Kathleen in there?"

That was hitting below the belt. The thought of one of his girls in Lynn's place made him feel physically ill. "First of all, I don't appreciate that, Olivia – my kids are off limits. Second, if something, God forbid, happened to one of my girls, you can believe I'd damn well want her to cooperate with the cops to help them catch the guy."

"I didn't mean it that way, Elliot. I just means she's a kid and she's been in the box for hours."

"Olivia's right. We're getting nowhere," Cragan said. "Huang said she'd be a tough one. I think you're going to have to give her some time. Call CPS to come get the girl. You guys, take a break. Go home. Get a some sleep and something to eat."

Fifteen minutes later, Elliot sat broodily at his desk, alone in the squad room, shuffling through evidence reports hoping that something, anything, would come to light in this case.

"I thought you were going home." Benson's voice sounded as she crossed the room.

"I thought you were," he retorted.

"Well, I'm not. But I did get some dinner. Want some kung pao?" She lifted the bag she was carrying.

Elliot sat back in his chair and looked up at his partner curiously. He knew for a fact that she didn't much care for kung pao herself, but she had to know it was his favorite. And the bag definitely held more than just dinner for one. He smiled. "Sure. Smells good."

----------------------------------------

Elliot took another bite of the kung pao from the white box. It was nice and greasy, just the way he liked it. Since his separation, he'd been enjoying even more unhealthy quantities of take-out food than a cop usually did. He'd have to get some more time in the gym, he thought, the waistband of his pants feeling just a bit tight. Or try a salad or something, he told himself ruefully, putting the box of half-eaten Chinese down on the desk.

"El, I'm sorry about what I said before. You were right, your family's off limits." Olivia said in between bites of her fried rice.

"It's OK, Liv. I know what you meant. I'm sorry for being so prickly about things. This case it just…"

"It gets to you," she finished for him.

"Yeah."

"How come?"

"I'm not sure. I mean, I feel sorry for her, for what she's had to have gone through."

"Yeah, but - "

"I know, I generally feel that way with all the victims. Something about this girl, though… She just puts me a little bit off balance. Messes up my timing or instincts or something. She's so openly hostile when all we want to do is help her."

"We've had hostile victims before," she reminded him.

"Yeah, but for the most part they had reasons to be hostile - to not want to work with us because they've been burned by cops before or something. But this is one case where we can really help this girl. But she's throwing our help away. Maybe she thinks she's not worth it, but then what does that make us worth?"

"You know you can't look at this rationally, not after what she's been through. She's bound to be… messed up. And what if she was burned by the system in the past? We have no way to know what happened to her. What if she tried to get away from this sadist that had her and some cop or other authority figure didn't believe her. You know how that could happen."

Yeah, he thought, he did. He'd seen it before - where someone being abused did try to get help only to be disbelieved or ignored by people who couldn't be bothered to give a damn. "Yeah, but she's smart. You've seen it. And she's independent and strong. I hate to see her still letting herself be a victim."

He walked over to the board, a wheeled bulletin board where they posted information and pieces of evidence from the case. It was a free-form technique that sometimes allowed them to make connections they might have otherwise missed. He'd stood before this board many times during many cases, but so far nothing new had been forthcoming in this one. It was all speculation. He looked at the sketches of the diner suspects, photos of her shoebox trinkets, the bloody knife, her bruises and scars… There must be something here that can help us, he told himself, angry because if there was something there, he sure wasn't seeing it.

A phone rang and Benson answered it.

As Elliot listened to the few words of her side of the conversation, the hairs on the back of his neck started to prickle. It was an instinct that had served him well in the past and he trusted it. Something was definitely happening. Maybe they'd finally catch a break on this one.

"What?" he asked when she put down the phone.

"We need to talk to Cragan."

In Don Cragan's office, Olivia briefed them both on her call from Munch.

"They found a guy at the marina that knew Lynn as Denise Bartell. She was living in Wildwood with her father Frank Bartell until about six months ago. He worked at the marina. That is his arm around her in the photo."

"Frank," Elliot murmured, remembering the neighbor's repeating of Lynn's unguarded words: 'How come I can never get rid of you, Frank?'

"Did they find Bartell?" Cragan asked.

Olivia looked at him. "Bartell's dead. They found his body in a shallow grave out of town a couple months ago."

"Oh my God," Elliot exclaimed. "That's why she's not hiding from her abductor. She's not scared he's going to come after her. She killed him. That's why she's more scared of us than of the bastard who raped her." Things were finally making some sense.

"We don't know that, Elliot," Cragan said. "Or do we? What do the Jersey cops say?"

"Well they've been looking for her as a person of interest. That's all Munch found out so far. But he's probably had a chance to get more information by now."

Cragan picked up the phone, dialed it, put it on speaker.

"Hi Captain," Munch's flat nasal voice sounded through the room.

"Just so I'm clear, this Frank Bartell was supposedly the girl's father, and he's been found murdered?"

"Yep. A hiker's dog dug him up. Grave in the woods. Their ME report says he'd exsanguinated. Been cut up pretty bad with a big knife."

"Like the one we got off her?" Elliot asked.

"They'll have to check to be sure, but the knife we found does look consistent with the size of the blade noted in their ME's report as the murder weapon."

That was that, Elliot thought, nodding. Lynn had to be the doer. She had the knife. She had the motive. Revenge? Escape? Either would do as well. Bartell was her 'Daddy' and must be the man who had abused her. Elliot had occasionally dreamed about killing pedophiles himself and if there was anyone that deserved to take a dirt nap it was this guy.

Munch was still talking. "Whoever cut him up did a number on him post-mortem. The ME said that it looks like the first blow caught an artery and killed him. The assailant kept stabbing even after he was dead. Definitely looks like a rage killing. More than a dozen stab wounds in total and…" his voice trailed off.

"And?" asked Cragan.

"Whoever killed him cut off his genitals."

"It's got to be her," Elliot said. "He raped and tortured her for years. If anyone had incentive to perform a sexual mutilation like that, it was her."

"We've got some DNA samples from their lab, we'll send them up to be run against the knife and the DNA we've got from her," Munch said.

It'll match, Elliot thought, certain of it. Lynn would possibly end up in prison for murder. The thought of her in lockup after the hell her young life must have been didn't sit well with him. She might get off, he told himself - some kind of post-traumatic defense. It would only take one juror being convinced that Bartell deserved to die to do it. He knew if he was on that jury and if he saw the photos of Lynn showing the evidence of her torment that he'd be hard-pressed to convict under any circumstance.

He willed himself to stop thinking about that. He was getting ahead of things. First get to the truth. Then make the arrests, if warranted. A trial, should there be one, was a long way into a distant and unpredictable future.

Cragan nodded. "Good. I feel more comfortable with our people working the forensics. One thing I want to find out is if the blood on the knife was his, was he her real father?"

"Doesn't seem likely, Cap," Elliot said.

"Yeah, but let's find out for sure." Cragan spoke into the speakerphone again. "Haven't the cops issued an arrest warrant for her? Why didn't we pick up on this?"

"They haven't. Seems that they thought the kid was probably a victim as well - apparently there's some evidence that she didn't dig the grave that they found, so they didn't consider her a primary suspect. They've been digging up half the woods around here to try to find her body, thinking some psycho killed them both."

That struck Elliot as a bit stupid on the part of the New Jersey cops. The multiple stabbings and genital mutilation definitely pointed to a crime of passion, not something a random killer would likely do. He knew if he'd been on the case he'd have looked at any family members or close friends right off the bat. Of course, he thought, the Jersey cops didn't know everything that he did. They most probably did not know what Bartell was.


	8. Chapter 08

Chapter 8 

Stabler and Benson found Munch and Fin at the local cop shop in Wildwood, New Jersey. As it wasn't tourist season, the town seemed quiet. To Elliot it looked like the local cops had little more to do than pick up drunks and write a few traffic tickets.

Elliot and Olivia were introduced to one of the town's two detectives, the one who had worked the Bartell case - Hancock, a big beefy guy whose stomach stuck out over his belt by an amount that guaranteed he'd never again get a good look at his feet. Upon meeting him, Elliot swore silently to himself that it'd definitely be a salad for him tonight.

"We found him back in September," Hancock declared in his Jersey accent. "Just after the holiday. He'd been in the ground since sometime in July."

"July?" Elliot asked. "Had you known Bartell was missing?"

"No, nobody thought he was missing. People thought he'd moved on. He'd told his neighbors that he was going to move back to the Midwest. He'd given notice at his job at the marina a couple weeks before. They just thought he'd left town."

"And the girl?"

"Her, too. Denise - his daughter - she'd have gone with him."

"Did you suspect her when you found the body was mutilated like that?" Elliot asked.

"I know what it looks like, detective," Hancock said. "The stabbing was pretty… uh, brutal and personal. We'd never had any complaints about Bartell though. Everyone who knew him liked him as far as we could tell. The kid was quiet and polite and hadn't ever caused any trouble." He pulled off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You're right, the brutality of the killing itself suggested some connection. Of course we thought about anybody that was close to Bartell, including Denise, but to tell the truth, nobody thought she'd have it in her to do… that. The kill site appeared to be well prepped, a relatively deep grave hand-dug in compacted soil. We hadn't had rain in weeks. We didn't see the girl as physically able to have done it."

"Maybe she had help - a boyfriend or something."

"Nobody ever saw Denise hanging around with a boy. Her father was strict - never let her date - always made her come straight home or to the marina after school. She kept to herself as far as we could find out. From all accounts she was a nice girl - quiet. We thought some wacko had killed them both. After we found him, we had corpse dogs and sonic detectors all over those woods. But we never found her."

"Because she was in New York City," Stabler retorted.

"Detective," Olivia said, distracting Hancock from Stabler's remark, "you said there were no reports of abuse or domestic violence related to the Bartells?"

He shook his head. "From all accounts, Frank Bartell was a good father and a concerned parent. He kept in close touch with the teachers at her school, kept her out of trouble, restricted who she was able to hang around with, that sort of thing."

The words rankled Elliot, but did not surprise him. Bartell was an abuser keeping control over his victim through isolation and co-opting any authority figures she might seek to turn to for help.

"Denise has been abused for years." Olivia opened the file folder she held and flipped through the photos, displaying them for Hancock. "Physical and sexual abuse."

"My God," Hancock said, looking at the photos. "You think her father did this?"

"We think Frank Bartell did this, but we doubt he was her father," she said. "The DNA will be back soon and then we'll know for sure. Denise Bartell's real name is Theresa Connor. She was abducted from Illinois ten years ago, we suspect by Bartell. It's extremely likely that he raped and abused her for years."

"We never got any reports of that," Hancock said. "By all accounts they were just an ordinary family."

Stabler snorted, but turned it into a clearing of his throat for propriety's sake. "Until he turned up dead and sexually mutilated, anyway. How long did they live in Wildwood?"

"Only about two years. He told his boss they'd come from near Trenton."

"Did you check that out?"

"Well, we tried to find family there, to report his death, but we didn't turn up anything."

Because there was probably nothing to find, Elliot thought. It looked like Bartell's entire life was a series of lies. He was on the run with a child sex slave in tow. Who knows how many towns he'd dragged Lynn to over the years - staying only a short time to keep her from building ties or finding anyone that could possibly help her… to keep her utterly dependent on him.

While Munch and Fin worked with the New Jersey cops on tracing Bartell's movements, Stabler and Benson visited the site where the body was found. It took about twenty minutes to hike through the woods from the road, and the foliage was thick with raspberry and other thorny bushes.

"Here it is," Hancock said, huffing and puffing, leaning up against a nearby tree to support his large frame.

Elliot looked around. It was certainly a spot unlikely to be found. He wondered how the hiker had come across it to begin with. "How deep was he?" The elements had begun to refill the excavated grave.

"About three feet down. And the ground was pretty hard for digging back in July. It would have taken a strong man a good long sweat to dig that grave, let alone a little girl."

Elliot reached down and felt the earth. It was fall now, and the ground wasn't parched, but he agreed. He didn't see Lynn killing Bartell, dragging him all the way out here and digging a grave for him. "Was he killed here or somewhere else?"

"Not sure. He'd been in the ground long enough that most of the physical evidence was lost - blood washed away, animals carrying off anything left behind. He'd uh, decomposed enough that the ME couldn't determine it from his physical state. We never found any evidence of a murder anywhere else, though." He shrugged. "I think he was probably killed here because it'd be a bitch to drag his dead body all the way out here. I figure he walked in under his own power, forced or tricked, and was killed here."

Elliot thought about it. He'd been very certain that Lynn had killed Bartell when he left New York. Now that he was at the gravesite he wasn't quite as sure. Bartell's description had him at six foot two and two hundred twenty pounds. Lynn was about five one and not much over a hundred. Even with a big knife, could she have forced him to come out here and then killed him? It was possible but not likely. He was certain she wouldn't have been able to carry or drag his dead body out here on her own. She either had help, or somehow lured him out here. Could she have had help? He wondered. Maybe she talked a boyfriend into offing him. He doubted she'd been able to hire a hit – Bartell wasn't making much at the marina and she didn't appear to have had any source of income.

He paced back and forth in front of the slumped hole in the ground. It was such a personal murder; she had to be directly involved. Even if she didn't kill Bartell herself, he thought, she would have been the one to cut off his penis. While the male part of him was disgusted at the brutality of that act, the father part of him couldn't help but feel like the guy had gotten what he deserved.

He looked again at the gravesite.

"Maybe Bartell was messing around with some kids in Wildwood. Could be a pissed-off parent who found out," Olivia said.

Hancock shrugged. "Possible, but we sure didn't hear anything about it. Nobody had anything bad to say about Bartell."

"Well, when people turn up murdered, it's not the greatest incentive for people to admit that they hated them," Elliot remarked grimly. "Could be any number of people out there who wanted to see the guy in the ground."

Olivia turned to Stabler. "Bartell might not have been satisfied with just abusing Lynn. He could have easily had other victims. They'd have families, friends, motive."

Benson's cell phone rang, and she answered it, stepping a few paces away, returning moments later with a disappointed look on her face.

"DNA's back. The blood on Lynn's knife is Bartell's." Her voice sounded her disappointment.

"So she did kill him." Elliot was not surprised. "Maybe not on her own, but she killed him." Not that the bastard didn't deserve killing.

"Cragan's issued an order for her arrest. He's having her brought in from CPS."

"Sounds like he doesn't have much of a choice." Elliot observed.

"Yeah. And the DNA also shows that Bartell isn't her biological father. He isn't related to her genetically at all."

Elliot nodded. Bartell was just some lousy pedophile that had nabbed her - had stolen a little girl's childhood and ruined her life. Had made her a victim and ultimately a killer. At six years old, her possibilities had been limitless. At seventeen, after Bartell, she could end up in prison. He rubbed his forehead in frustration. Prison… after a decade of hell. It didn't seem fair. And even if she got off on the murder charge, she was still damaged, possibly beyond repair, and there was nothing that he could do about it. Hell, at least some of this was his own fault. If he hadn't pushed her, hadn't taken a few liberties in his investigation… Who in the hell would be helped by all this? Not Bartell, who was better off in the ground. Not Lynn, who was now known to be a killer and who'd never get her life back. Sometimes the job didn't seem worth it.

----------------------------------------

Back at the Wildwood cop shop, they caught up with Munch and Fin.

"Find out anything?" Stabler asked.

"Like I said before, the girl's a ghost. Couldn't find anyone that really knew her. Now Daddy was known and well liked around town, but it looks like he held a tight reign on the kid," Fin reported.

"No boyfriends?" Elliot asked. He suspected that she'd had help to kill Bartell and a boyfriend made sense. Someone who wanted to rescue her might be convinced to kill, particularly if he knew what Bartell had done to her.

Munch shook his head. "Bartell didn't let her date."

"We've seen girls get around that sort of thing."

"Yeah, but the local boys in her school thought she was weird. Nobody's admitting to having any kind of relationship with her."

"Weird?" Olivia asked.

"Quiet. Sullen. Sounded like she wouldn't give them the time of day. No girlfriends either. Some girls in her class did say she wouldn't change in front of anyone in the gym locker room," Munch reported.

"Makes sense that she didn't want anyone to see her scars," Benson observed.

"Any sign that anyone knew what the bastard was doing to her?" Stabler asked.

"Nope. Not so far anyway. Folks think he was a nice guy. When he turned up dead everyone was shocked."

"What about any of the kids in town? Think Bartell molested any of them?" Elliot asked, wondering. Benson had been right in pointing out that pedophiles often had multiple victims. It seemed true that Lynn was Bartell's chosen victim, but that didn't mean he wouldn't have tried to abuse any other kids. In fact, it was likely. His successful abduction of Theresa would have made him confident and cocky. Elliot was pretty certain that Bartell had probably hurt other kids as well as Theresa, at least at some points. That might be one reason why the girl had no friends - she might have been trying protecting others from the hell that she knew.

"No reports of it." Munch shook his head. "We checked neighbors, classmates, kids of people at the marina. Everyone says Frank Bartell was a great guy. I wish we knew where else they lived. We've got inquiries out all across the eastern seaboard under his name and description. Maybe something will turn up."

"I don't think there's much else to find here," Stabler said. "We should get back and talk to the girl again."

Benson's phone rang. She stepped away a few paces to answer. Within moments she was back. "Lynn's missing."

"What?" Fin said.

"She escaped?" Stabler asked.

"Well, she wasn't actually arrested yet, so I'm not sure we can call it an escape. CPS had her, but she wasn't a prisoner. She bolted from a social worker's car in a traffic jam. Cragan's got a bulletin out on her. Wants Elliot and me back ASAP."

"Damn it!" Stabler said. "What was CPS playing at?"

"You guys go. We'll stay here and wrap things up," Munch suggested.

"He just wants to hit the beach." Fin's attempt to lighten the mood fell flat.

----------------------------------------

"What the hell happened?" Stabler asked, getting up in Cragan's face.

"Calm down, Elliot. CPS was transferring her from one location to another because they needed the bed. The girl jumped in traffic."

"What, they didn't have a police escort?"

"It was just before the arrest warrant. I sent uniforms for her, but by the time they caught up with the Social Worker, she was gone."

"Damn it."

"Yeah, well, we'll just have to find her." Cragan said. "On another note, I just got word that there was a robbery last night in Brooklyn. Two nondescript guys with guns. Local diner. Made the customers give up their wallets and jewelry."

"The same guys?"

"Seems possible. Initial description matches our perps. Prints are being checked now, and we'll run the DNA from her rape kit."

"Sexual assault?"

Cragan shook his head. "Some guy outside had seen them pull the guns. Called 911. Uniforms were on the scene pretty quick. It was dicey for a while, but we got them, no injuries. They're down at the 66th in a holding cell. Brooklyn's waiting to ship them out to Rikers until you get a chance at them. Get down there and check it out."

"What about Lynn?"

"I've got some uniforms checking out her apartment and the diner, and canvassing the neighborhood where she jumped the car. The bulletin's out to all five Burroughs. Something might turn up. For now, though, I'd like to get the guy who raped her. She deserves that, no matter if she killed Bartell or not."

Elliot had to agree. He'd much rather be getting justice for Lynn's assault than arresting her for murdering the man who had kidnapped and raped her.

----------------------------------------

Down at the 66th, Stabler and Benson met the two robbery detectives who were working the case. "Not much to work though, the uniforms caught them red handed, there are about a dozen witnesses. It's pretty cut and dry," the woman officer said. "You think they're your perps, too?"

"The prints should be back soon and we'll know for sure. But we'd sure like a crack at them," Elliot said.

"Be our guest. We got the leader in the box for you. Neither one of them's talking, and they aren't in the system, so we still don't even have names on them."

"Leader?"

"Yeah, according to the witnesses, this one called the shots. Told the other what to do. My guess is if these are your guys, then this one's the scum who raped your vic."

After depositing their weapons in a locker, Benson and Stabler entered the interrogation room. Elliot noticed it was pretty standard - felt almost like home. In the center of the room a young man sat on a chair, sprawled back, his feet on the table. He looked a lot like the sketch artist rendering done from the Manhattan witnesses, but not enough to be certain. The suspect was a weasely-looking guy, brown hair, a bit of a ruddy complexion, maybe five-ten or five-eleven – looked like a thousand other guys in the city.

Elliot walked around the table, shoving the perp's feet off as he did so, nearly topping the man's chair.

"Hey!" The guy yelled as he struggled to balance himself in the chair without tipping.

"Mind your manners. I'm Detective Stabler, this is Detective Benson. We're Manhattan SVU."

"So?"

"So, you and your little friend robbed a place over on our turf last week."

"No way."

Elliot continued to pace around the table, and around the perp, doing his best to look intimidating. "Yeah, it was you. The diner. We know it. We got you." He pointed repeatedly at the suspect, with sharp certain movements. Then he stopped suddenly. "And you raped that poor little waitress, didn't you?"

"I don't got to rape nobody."

The guy's voice was indignant, but Elliot could see a slight change in his demeanor. Yep, he's our guy, he thought.

"Yeah, you did it. And you're a moron."

"I didn't do nothing."

"And the Brooklyn cops caught you doing nothing in a similar place last night. You had a gun, the money from the register, and all the customer's wallets, that's doing nothing is it?"

"So?"

"Big man." Olivia leaned in. "Did you know she's barely seventeen? You raped a little kid. That makes you a pedophile. And you know what they do to child molesters in prison, buddy?"

Elliot saw the man's jaw line twitch. Yeah, he was scared. Probably more stupid than scared, but scared nonetheless.

"Why'd you do it? Big man who can rape a little girl at gunpoint." He turned to Benson. "Maybe he can't get it up otherwise."

"Yeah, he looks the type," she replied.

Elliot watched his partner looking the suspect up and down with derision, standing in something of a hyper sexualized female power pose - hip and chest stuck out, lips pouty. He didn't know if this was a conscious tactic on her part, but he'd seen it do a number on a suspect more than once. He had to admit that even after seeing her do this many times, he still found it a little uncomfortable himself. He pulled his eyes away.

He suddenly leaned over the table on his knuckles, bringing his face within inches from the suspect's. "You left your DNA inside her, you moron. You've probably got her DNA on your gun. We've got you. And you'd better start talking right now if you want any kind of break on this. You're going to prison. If you cooperate now, we may be able to put in a word with the DA. Make your time a little easier."

"Why would you do that?" the guy said. "If I'm the guy that did her, why would you want to cut me a break?"

He sat down and leaned back in the chair. "Save her having to testify to what you did to her, you scumbag. If that poor little kid doesn't have to relive that humiliation in open court, then that's good enough for me." He didn't bother to mention that his complaining witness was not only missing, had been uncooperative every step of the way, and was presently on the run from a murder charge of her own. "But you know, if she gets up there on the stand - she's just a tiny thing you know, a little girl – just a teenager - and tells about everything that you did to her, do you know what's going to happen?"

"What?"

"The jury's going to want you to fry. They're going to wish the DA could have gone for the death penalty and they're going to convict you in about ten seconds and give you the maximum. You'll spend the next fifty years in prison - as a pedophile that rapes kids. Now that's some hard time. I doubt you'll make it out alive." He shrugged.

The man was silent. His face registered first anger, then frustration, and then, finally, defeat. "So if I talk, you'll help me get a deal? I'm no pedophile. She just pissed me off, that's all. I didn't know she was underage."

"Why'd you do it? You had the money. You were in the clear."

"The cunt disrespected me!" The angry expression was back.

It took most of the control Elliot had to prevent himself from launching his body across the table at the bastard. His voice came out taut and the words seemed to stick in his throat. "How did she disrespect you?"

"Told me to go fuck myself. Crazy bitch. Knew I had a gun and could kill her in a second. But she still flapped her gums at me, in front of Tommy and everyone. Had to teach her a lesson, didn't I?"

Elliot struggled to keep his face immobile, although it seemed to cause him a strange physical pain. There wasn't really anything left to say, so he was silent, staring into the perp's dark and remorseless eyes.

Olivia produced a notepad and pen and slapped both down in front of the guy. "Write down what happened and sign it." She turned to Elliot. "I'll call Novak."

Stabler sat and watched the guy write, thinking. Part of him was wishing, as usual, that he could beat the crap out of the guy. To physically assault and sexually violate someone because of some perceived disrespect – well, it wasn't even particularly uncommon, but it still amazed him how utterly malicious and foul a sizable portion of the human race could be.

But sometimes things worked out. The guy confessed. He and his buddy Tommy would be going to prison for the robberies and the rape, and Lynn wouldn't have to testify. Being a murder suspect herself, not to mention her not-so-charming personality, he doubted that she'd have much credence if she even made it to the stand. He sighed inwardly and hoped that Olivia would bring back some coffee after she called Novak.


	9. Chapter 09

Chapter 9 

With the diner perps in custody and no leads on Lynn, at least Elliot had gotten as close to a full night's sleep as he ever did. He'd needed it. Upon arriving early in the squad room, he found that the patrol canvassing the area of the SRO, the diner, and the block where Lynn had escaped had generated a big fat zero. Elliot wasn't sure how he felt with the progression of this case. There was a murderer to bring to justice, and he was a cop. It was his job. Though Bartell's murder had been committed in another jurisdiction, the NYPD was taking part in the investigation, with SVU taking the lead because they had broken the case and because Lynn was very likely still in the city.

The thought of Theresa, the girl abducted at age 6 by a predator, or Denise, the schoolgirl in Jersey living with her abuser, or Lynn, the young waitress victimized by a thug… The thought of any of them having to go to prison wasn't sitting well with Elliot.

Cragan, also in early, had tried to keep him on track - told him to do his job and let the courts sort it out. He was right, Elliot thought. He knew that they'd both seen cases where the perps walked on far less than having suffered a lifetime of abuse. If anyone deserved a walk, it was Lynn. But she'd need a good lawyer and she'd have to cooperate in her defense. Given her track record in cooperation thus far, Elliot worried that if anything was going to stand in the way of Lynn's acquittal, it was Lynn herself.

Olivia arrived, looking like she'd gotten a good night's sleep as well, and bearing pastry from the bakery down the street. She looked good, he thought. Sleep agreed with her.

"We got nothing. Lynn could be anywhere," Elliot said, leaning back in his chair, chewing on a bite of pastry.

"No money, no friends, no ties. She's probably out on the streets," Olivia said.

"So how do we find her? We've got descriptions out, but it's a long shot."

Munch came through the squad room. "It's OK, don't get up," he said to Elliot, who was sprawled back in his chair, one foot up the edge of his desk, "I'm just working here." Munch paused. "Are those for anybody?" he asked as he helped himself to a danish.

"What's up, John?"

"I got something on the mom."

"Huh?"

"The girl's mom - I got something." He enunciated the sentence slowly.

"Julia Connor?" Elliot hadn't really forgotten that they were still searching for Theresa Connor's mother, but given the events of the case, it hadn't been particularly in the forefront of his mind.

"Yep. She had state public medical assistance in Wisconsin. I traced her from Racine to a place called Pardeeville - yeah, it's a real town, gotta love those cheeseheads - to Milwaukee."

"So where is she now?" Olivia asked.

Munch sighed, frowning. "Found dead of exposure three years ago. Seemed she was on her way to drinking herself to death slowly when she had a few too many during a January snowstorm and passed out in an alley. Froze to death and wasn't found until someone shoveled out two days later."

"Damn," Elliot said, rubbing his forehead. "We're sure it was her – Theresa's mom?"

"Yeah," Munch confirmed. "According to the bar maid at her favorite suicide spot she never got over losing her kid. Drank there every day to dull the pain."

"The girl can't catch a break, can she?" Elliot fumed. They'd finally been able to trace her mother – the one person Lynn might have had left in the world… Only now she didn't. The loss of that possibility nagged at him in the pit of his gut. Even though he hadn't really expected to find Julia Connor, the thought that she might be out there somewhere must have been stored deep inside him. It was unexpectedly dismal to know now beyond doubt that the girl was utterly alone.

Nobody responded.

"I mean, she's out there, all alone. If we could have found her Mom, at least she'd have someone. One person out there in the world on her side come hell or high water."

"Yeah, maybe if we'd found her Mom she'd have come in. She must remember something about her life before she was taken. I can't imagine she'd not want to at least see her Mom again," Munch observed.

Elliot sat up. "You're right. As much as she denied being Theresa, she has to know. She remembers. She'd want her Mom. She'd come in for her Mom."

"Yeah, that'd be all well and good if we had the mom, Elliot," Olivia pointed out.

He didn't answer. He was busy dialing the telephone.

----------------------------------------

The news stations all reported a heart-wrenching human-interest story that evening - the story of a girl abducted a decade ago and recently discovered only by the most meager of chances. A girl with a doting mother who had never lost faith that her beloved daughter might be found one day. A mother who had flown to New York immediately only to discover that her miraculously found child was lost again. Amber alerts were issued, photos of Theresa Connor, aka Lynn Baker were distributed, and the city police asked its concerned citizenry to please help reunite this lost little girl with her mother.

The story details had been judiciously provided by an inside source in the NYPD. There was no mention of the years of abuse at the hands of a pedophile, or of the recent rape in the Manhattan diner, only a story about a little girl who was lost, and then found, and then lost again, and a mother who had never stopped searching.

"You think this is going to work?" Munch asked after they watched perky blond reporter Jenni Moore relaying a particularly melodramatic version of the story on Channel four on the squad room TV set.

Elliot shrugged. "She doesn't know that we know about Bartell's body in Jersey. I think she'll come in. She's got to want her mother."

"I'm not so sure I like this," Olivia stated, her voice guarded.

"Why not?"

"It's… it's just… cruel. Her mom's dead."

"She doesn't know that."

"If she comes in she'll know it soon enough. She'll hate us."

Elliot rubbed his forehead. The idea that had seemed like such a good one at the time now weighed like a rock in his gut. He'd just been lamenting his role in exposing Lynn's crime and now he had gone and set her up. He wondered why. He wouldn't have been particularly disappointed if the Bartell murder was never closed. It wasn't even really his case. His case – the diner rape – was solved. Part of it, he assumed, was his drive as a cop. This wasn't the first time it had bit him in the butt.

He considered things. This wasn't something that he could just turn off at will. Once he was on a case, he had to follow it through. The law wasn't always fair, and sometimes people that didn't deserve it got hurt. It wasn't his job to decide where the law applied and where it didn't, as much as this sometimes frustrated him. He looked up at his partner. "But we'll have her, Liv. And that's our job."

----------------------------------------

The next day it seemed like all of New York City was buzzing with the miraculous story. Thanks to a relatively slow news week and Elliot's press contacts, the front page of each of the city's morning newspapers sported the desired headlines and photos. After reading a particularly tear-jerker version of the tale in the Post, Elliot felt pretty certain that if anyone in any of the five Burroughs spotted Lynn, they'd hear about it. Nothing like getting 8.2 million people on the lookout, he mused.

He still felt a bit disquieted about the whole thing. The night before he'd had a strange dream where Lynn walked through deserted hallways of the station house calling out, "Momma? Momma, where are you?" She'd crossed the SVU squad room and found him, the only other person in the vacant building, sitting at his desk. She'd known by looking in his eyes that her mom was dead, that it was all a trick. She'd pulled the long switchblade knife. He was unable to move… glued to the chair, wondering how she'd gotten the knife out of the evidence room. He'd watched as she plunged the knife into her own throat and the blood sprayed across the wooden desk and over his face. He found himself gasping awake, disoriented in the dark gray of morning.

It was just a dream, he knew - subconscious thoughts mingling with random flashes of memory, inspiration, and fantasy. It didn't really mean anything. He normally didn't dream much, and when he did, it was generally not something he cared to remember or analyze. That was the lot of an SVU detective, given what they saw and experienced on a daily basis. He'd learned to live with that a long time ago. Still, he couldn't quite shake the feelings from last night's dream.

"Anything come in?" Elliot asked, passing Fin on his way to his desk.

"About a thousand tips on the tip line. When you came up with this brilliant plan Elliot, did you account for all the whack-jobs out there calling in to let us know that she's either been beamed up by space aliens or that the government's black helicopters just snatched her off forty-second street?"

"That bad?"

"Worse. We've got uniforms running down the least outrageous ones."

Munch, sitting at a nearby desk piped up, holding a sheet of paper, "Like this one where she's been the mayor's secret mistress, living in a hidden love nest in the basement of city hall?" At the look from Fin, he shrugged, "Hey, it could happen."

It wasn't the most productive of days. Most of the tips had turned out to be bogus. A couple reports where she'd been seen out on the streets were possibilities, but turned up nothing. Elliot yawned, putting down a tip report he was reading.

"I think you should all call it a day," Cragan told them at six.

After a few moments of non-response from the detectives, he continued. "I mean it. You've all put in some long hours on this case. There's no reason to think this will work just because you're here in the office late. You're not going to make someone out there spot her any sooner."

"You don't have to tell me again." Fin said, putting the phone down and getting up.

"Anybody want to go get a drink?" Munch suggested.

"Sounds good. O'Malley's?" Elliot suggested the Irish bar a couple blocks away, a favorite watering hole for the detectives.

-------------------------------------------

"No, El, I've got to get home," Olivia protested. "John and Fin left an hour ago."

"Come on, Liv, it's early yet."

"No, it's not. Go home, Elliot." Her words were firm.

He shrugged, reluctant.

Olivia leaned in and rested her hand on his arm. The touch was electric, and he willed himself to contain any response. She was his partner – a good one. They'd been an effective team for a long time. She didn't need him mucking around complicating things, and if he was honest with himself, he didn't really need that either.

"I know it's difficult," she said, "I imagine your apartment feels kind of… empty. Get some sleep and then take some time to go and see your kids tomorrow. It'll do you good, El."

He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, and then he sighed. "You're right. Thanks, Liv. See you tomorrow."

He watched her depart and after a few minutes, got up to leave. He didn't have far to go. One thing that had come out of his separation and giving Cathy back the house was not having to commute from Queens anymore. He'd hated staying alone in that empty house by himself, it felt so strange. A house needed a family. His studio apartment was a dump, but at least it was a convenient dump, and when he was there, he didn't miss the noise of his family quite so much. Leaving the bar, Elliot walked three blocks down and two over, to the place he'd not yet learned to think of as home. You can't call three suitcases, two boxes, a TV set and a few sticks of furniture home, he thought.

He walked up the three floors and let himself into his apartment. The halls were quiet at that hour of the evening. He sort of wished they weren't. Now he'd have no excuse not to sleep. He eased his key into the lock and pushed the door open. At the moment the knob clicked, he felt a presence behind him. The drinks he'd had may have left his instincts a little less sharp than usual, but he was a former Marine and a trained cop. He whirled, gun drawn. She was standing behind him. Lynn.

"Damn it, you almost got yourself killed." He tried not to shout, suppressing the adrenalin effect heightening his nerves - no need to wake the neighbors. He lowered the gun, but kept it in his hand. "Hey, Lynn."

She looked like a street person - layers of ratty clothes and a stocking cap. Must have rolled a bum, he thought, looking at the oversized apparel. She stood there, silent, her face unreadable.

Finally she spoke. "Hey, Stabler."

"I was hoping you'd come to see me." This was certainly true, although he'd much preferred her to have found him at the station. For her to have traced or followed him here was unsettling. "I've got a surprise for you - we found your Mom."

"My mother's dead."

Elliot wasn't sure if she'd seen through his ruse with the newspapers, or if she was still denying being Theresa Connor at all. "So Julia Connor isn't your mother?" he asked. "Because she's been missing her little girl for a long time. Let's talk about it inside." He wanted to get out of the hallway. An over-curious neighbor might show up. "Come on in." He knew she might bolt, but he turned away, pushed open the door, and entered, leaving the door wide behind him. He didn't look back, he just trusted his instincts. She'd follow.

As a cop, he knew this was a definite no-no. He was inviting a murderer into his apartment. And he was alone, with no backup. He wasn't quite sure why he was doing this. He'd had her at gunpoint. He could have cuffed her and called for a patrol car to pick her up in about two seconds. What was he waiting for? He had the girl. That had been his aim, hadn't it? The whole reason for this grand deception? So what in the hell was he doing?

He took off his coat as he entered the apartment, tossing it over a chair. He holstered his gun, although he kept his right hand free and ready. On the table next to the couch there was a whiskey bottle and some glasses. "Want a drink?" he asked, pouring himself a small one, more for something to do than because he really wanted it.

"No thanks," he heard from behind him. The girl had followed.

"Yeah, you're too young, aren't you? Sorry about that." He turned.

"I'm not a kid. I've been drunk plenty of times. I just don't want it," she said.

"Sure. Want something else? A soda… water?"

"No."

He sat down and gestured to the other chair.

She sat.

"So you're not Theresa Connor? I was hoping I could finally give Julia Connor some peace; tell her I found her kid. Julia's been looking for her little girl for a long time."

"Then she's a fool." Lynn spat.

"Yeah? Why's that?"

"Her kid's dead."

"I don't believe that."

"You're a fool too. Even if that girl's somewhere, she's been dead a long time."

"You're not dead, Terri. You didn't die. You survived what that bastard did to you. Don't throw that away."

She stood up. "I'm not Terri Fucking Connor."

"Then who are you? You're not Lynn. You're not Denise. Who are you?"

She shook her head and he could see her eyes – that cold, hard look that she'd had when he'd taken her statement in the diner. "I'm nobody."

"That's what he wanted you to think - Frank Bartell. Didn't he?" It was a statement more than a question.

"Shut up." Her voice was flat.

"He told you your mom was dead. He told you that you were nothing - that you were worthless. That the only purpose of your existence was to satisfy his perverted need for power and domination." He paused a moment. "That's not you. That's what he wanted to make you. But you're strong, Terri. You survived. Take yourself back."

She swallowed, audibly, and started to pace. Her breathing was heavy and her hands shook. Her head shook from side to side and she muttered to herself. Elliot couldn't understand her words, but he felt confusion and despair emanating from her. The façade seemed to be cracking. Maybe that wasn't the best thing, given the immediate circumstance, but he really wanted to reach her.

The pacing grew quicker, the muttering more incoherent. Her eyes, although open, looked something like he'd seen when his kids were in REM sleep. "Terri?" he called, and then louder: "Terri!" He stood, suddenly, in her path, grabbing her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. "Bartell's dead! Don't let him control you anymore!"

"Lynn!" she demanded loudly, and then she stopped, suddenly and completely silent, mouth agape.

He saw her staring at him, knew that she was taking in the meaning of his words - that he knew that Bartell was dead. She turned quickly for the door. He was there before she reached it, blocking her. "I'm sorry, Lynn. I can't let you leave. I know Bartell's dead, and I know you killed him." He took her shoulders and steered her back into the room, toward the chair and sat her down in it.

"I'm going to call for a car and then we're going to go back to the station where we can talk about this." Elliot reached out for the phone. It was a moment of carelessness, he'd later decide, maybe brought on by the emotion of the evening or the couple drinks he'd tossed back earlier. He'd taken his eyes off her for a second. In that second, she'd picked up the lamp from the end table - the one he'd bought for three bucks at a local flea market a couple weeks ago. He'd seen her movement, tried to pivot and grab his weapon at the same time. He wasn't fast enough. His world went black.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10 

Elliot woke slowly, dragging himself to consciousness because he knew he absolutely needed to be awake. Something had gone terribly wrong, that he was certain of, although his thoughts were otherwise kind of blurred. The floor was hard underneath him, and his arms felt strange. He was alive at least. The girl must have bashed him on the head, he realized. It throbbed painfully as he struggled to wake enough to open his eyes.

His thoughts grew less muddy. Lynn knew that he knew that she had killed Bartell. She knew he'd have to arrest her for it. She'd gotten the jump on him because he'd let his guard down… Because he'd invited a murderer into his apartment. He could have just arrested her. But he didn't. Why? He asked himself. Because he wanted to chat? Because he was so focused on getting into her head that he'd forgotten to do his job?

But she hadn't killed him. He was hurt, but alive. She'd had the opportunity, and she hadn't killed him. She wasn't really a killer – sure, she'd killed Bartell, but that bastard had tortured her, raped her... By definition she was a killer, but she hadn't killed him – a police detective who had a duty to arrest her, and who was rendered defenseless and at her mercy.

He was sure he'd find himself alone when he finally was able to open his eyes. The girl would have run. She had no reason to hang around. He'd just pick up the phone and call Olivia and everything would be OK.

With an effort, he finally wrenched his eyelids open through sheer will. The light of the overhead fixture dazzled him briefly. He forced his eyes to focus. A dark shape suddenly blocked out the glare. Lynn stood over him, looking down, holding his gun in her hand. Damn.

He tried to roll over so he could stand, but his hands were fixed behind him tightly, cuffed. Damn it, he thought, his own cuffs. With effort, he sat up shakily.

"Lynn -" His voice came out hoarse and he wondered how long he'd been out.

The girl stepped back from him.

"Lynn, what are you doing?"

She didn't reply. He could see fear and confusion in her face. He was confused as well. Why hadn't she run? Why was she still here? If she was going to kill him, why hadn't she already done it?

"Lynn, please. Let me go. This has gone far enough."

She backed up another couple of steps.

"Please, Lynn. None of this is going to help things. But I can help you. Uncuff me."

She sat down on the chair. The gun was in her hand, but not pointed at him. She held it loosely, as if she hadn't ever held a gun before, which, Stabler thought, was quite probably the case. An emotionally disturbed girl, inexperienced with firearms, had him cuffed and at her mercy. It was a scenario where the slightest mistake on either of their parts could become deadly real fast.

He watched her closely, wondering if he'd have an opportunity to take out the girl physically. It would be difficult to launch himself at the girl from his position on the floor, and with his hands bound, it would be nearly impossible to get a hold of the gun. She'd have time to aim and fire in the time it might take for him to reach her. If she was inexperienced with firearms, she might miss, but it was still a tremendous risk. He weighed his options. She had killed before, he reminded himself. He shouldn't take her lightly. Brute force was probably not the way to go in this situation, he decided. Talking was the only way to go. If he could just reach her…

"Lynn?"

She looked down at him.

"We caught the guy who raped you." His voice was soft and quiet.

She blinked. He could see definite surprise in her eyes.

"What?"

"The guy from the diner. We got him. He confessed. He's going to go to prison for what he did to you."

Her surprised look turned to suspicion. "You're lying to me."

He shook his head. "The guy who raped you, his name was Jake McCrady. The other guy was Tommy Cowper. They hit a diner in Brooklyn two nights ago and got caught. They're gonna go away for a long time."

"That other place, did they…" she paused, looking away, "hurt… anybody?"

"No. It was a lucky break - someone got in a call to the police right away and they got there right away - before anyone could get hurt."

"Good. That's good." She fiddled with the gun, her voice low. "Yeah. That's real good."

"Yeah, it is. Sometimes things turn out. I'm sorry about what happened to you. But I'm very glad we could get the guy who did it."

She shrugged.

"I know you care, Lynn" he said.

"Why should I?" she asked, her voice sarcastic.

"Jake McCrady brutalized you."

"So what?"

He blinked. That girl he met in the diner was back – she was cold and hard. "You didn't deserve what he did to you, Lynn."

"So if I'm really this poor little Terri Connor who's been raped and tortured all her life you think one more fuck is really gonna hurt her?"

He swallowed, unsure how to proceed. This was as close as she'd gotten to admitting she was Terri Connor, and that Bartell had been her abuser. "I think," he said carefully, "that you won your freedom from Bartell, and that meant an end to all that shit, Lynn. No more being the slave to someone's sadistic perversions and abuse. Then some lowlife robbing a diner is going to take you back to that place? Yeah, I think it hurt you plenty."

She sat silently for a while, and he watched. Her expression wasn't quite that hard cold one he'd seen in the diner.

"Can you take these cuffs off me, please?" he asked politely.

"I can't do that."

"Come on. You've got the gun. I'm not going anywhere. It's a little bit uncomfortable like this." He wiggled himself even more upright and slid back against the wall for support. He wasn't as young as he used to be, and his back wasn't pleased with the arrangement.

She was silent for a while. He waited, wondering how to best extract himself from this situation. Olivia and the rest of the unit would be sleeping and nobody miss him until the morning. Had any of his neighbors been woken by the scuffle? It was possible. Maybe the police were on the way right now. He wasn't sure if that would be a good thing or not. It might make an already dicey situation worse. It would be best if he could talk her down right here right now. Unfortunately, he wasn't sure where to go next.

"Where's Julia Connor?" she demanded, suddenly, staring hard at him. "Where's my mother?"

Elliot was surprised. There it was – the admission that she was Theresa. It was an opening, and he was going to take it. "I can arrange for you to see her, Terri."

"Where is she?" she repeated, louder.

"She's waiting for you. Let me take you to her. She's wanted to find you for a long time."

She was watching him closely, looking into his eyes, into his soul.

"You're a fucking liar."

"I'm not lying to you, Terri."

"Yeah, you are. I saw the paper - the sob story. Poor child ripped from her mother's arms. Poor mother finally found her kid. You're a liar." She paced back and forth. "You know how I know it?" She leaned over him, glaring down, her eyes staring into the depths of him.

He could see from her eyes that she had him. He shook his head.

"There were no photos of her. No photos of Julia Connor. If you had really found her, there'd have been pictures. She'd have been interviewed on TV. It's all been a trick to get me. I knew it."

"Then why are you here?" Elliot countered. If she'd known it was a lie and had still come, well, that meant something. It meant she wanted help… she wanted to be caught. Or maybe, she just didn't trust herself to believe it was a lie if there was any chance at all that her mother was found.

"Because I'm stupid."

"You're not stupid, Terri. You want to find your mother. That's not stupid, that's normal."

"It's stupid. She's long gone." She lifted the gun and leveled it at him, her eyes hard and cold. "And you're a liar."

"Please calm down, Terri, you don't want to do this."

"I wanted to see my mother, damn it, but you lied – tried to trick me. I never should have come here!"

The gun wavered a bit, but remained pointed in his direction.

"Bastard! " She put her other hand on the gun to steady her grip.

Damn, Elliot thought. He was in the shit now. Huang had warned him about trying to trick the girl. She'd killed before, and she was already on the run for murder. She didn't have much to lose by killing him. But she hadn't killed him before, and she hadn't run when she'd had the chance. She'd stayed. Why? He was thinking frantically.

"Admit it!" she screamed.

"Yes. Yes, I did trick you. I'm sorry, Terri." He looked past the barrel of the gun pointed directly at him, to the scared teenager holding it. She looked enraged, but she also had a strange resigned look. Like someone reconciled to all the shit the world had thrown at them. "We did find your mother, Terri, we did, I swear it to you. But she'd died a few years ago. I'm so sorry. She loved you, Terri. And she never lost hope that you were out there somewhere."

"You're fucking with me."

"No, I swear. She missed you every single day until she died. She just couldn't live with the loss anymore. She died loving you."

The girl lowered the gun, and Elliot breathed a sigh of relief.

She got up and paced some more. Then she grabbed the bottle of whiskey and drank a swig. Her back was turned for a moment, and Elliot wiggled himself over a few inches along the wall toward the telephone. He stopped just as she turned back toward him, slumping against the wall trying to look defeated.

A tear traced down her face. "Why?" she asked. "Why would you do that? Why would you say she was alive? That she was here?"

"I'm sorry. I had to find you."

She swallowed audibly and sat back down. He watched her. She played with the gun idly again.

"Because of what happened to Bartell?"

He nodded. "He was found. We know you did it, Terri." He paused. "And if you ask me, Bartell had it coming. I'm sure you'll get off, but it's my job to bring you in so we can sort things out. Let me go now. Everything's going to be OK. I've got friends in the DA's office. And I know some good defense attorneys who will be chomping at the bit to take your case."

He watched her. She looked like she was thinking hard. That was a good sign. He just wished she'd stop fiddling with the gun.

"Terri, who helped you?"

"Huh?"

"Someone helped you do away with Bartell. Who was it?"

She seemed confused.

He pressed. "Did you have a boyfriend, Terri? Was that who helped you dispose of Bartell?"

She shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Bartell was a big guy, Terri. The grave was pretty deep. That ground was rock hard. It would have been really difficult for you to dig that grave. And I can't believe that you could drag or coerce Bartell that far out into the woods."

She didn't respond.

"I don't believe you forced him out there, killed him and dug the grave by yourself. That's a big job. Someone had to help you. Who dug the grave?"

She stalked back over to the whiskey bottle. He edged closer to the phone, but in a second she was back, fortified by alcohol and adrenalin. In her eyes was something that Elliot read as loathing.

"I can't believe how you tricked me and yet you can still be so stupid," she spat.

It was his turn to be confused. "Huh?"

"You want to know who dug the grave? You really want to know?" She threw the whiskey bottle against the wall where it smashed with a loud noise. Glass shards flew across the room, and the little spirit that had been left in the bottle made a dark wet stain on the carpet that reminded him eerily of blood. Stabler wondered if his neighbors were dialing in a noise complaint if they hadn't already.

"Yeah," he answered her. "I want to know."

She leaned down over him, her face inches from him. Her voice was quiet and measured, almost as if she dared him to not believe her. "Frank dug the grave."

"Bartell? You made him dig his own grave?"

"No, you idiot, he dug my grave." She stepped back and sat down in the chair, weariness on her features.

"Your grave?" Elliot thought about it. It made sense. They'd not found anyone likely to be an accomplice. It was unlikely that Lynn could have arranged the grave and done the killing herself.

"My grave."

She was a victim - had been a victim for a decade. He wondered why he hadn't considered this possibility. It made sense. Had Bartell brought her out there to kill her? Had she saved her own life in those final moments by somehow getting the jump on Bartell? It could happen. She'd gotten the jump on him, an armed police detective, right here in his own apartment.

"He was going to kill you?" he asked.

"He was tired of me. Didn't want me anymore. Couldn't get it up with me anymore." She paced back and forth in front of him, gun swinging. "He had my replacement all lined up - a blond seven-year-old down the street – pretty little Chelsea. He'd put out the word we were going back to the Midwest so it wouldn't look suspicious when he left town. We packed up. Left. He was going to lay low for a week or two out of town and then come back and grab the kid."

Her face showed a strange combination of sadness and anger. The bastard deserves to rot in hell, Elliot thought.

"On the way out, he told me we were going for a hike. To enjoy the scenery before we left the Northeast." She sneered.

"You knew he was going to kill you?"

"I'd felt it. The planning. The way he was looking at me. Like I was some burden to be dealt with. Like he could hardly stand to look at me anymore."

She paced more. "That's why I got the knife. I knew what was coming. I kept it with me, hidden all the time. Waiting."

"So he took you out to the woods. Then what happened?"

"We got close and I saw it - the hole in the ground. Deep and fresh. I knew it was for me. He thought I was stupid. Said something like, 'I wonder what's going on over there.' Like I'm an idiot."

"Do you know how he was going to kill you?"

"He had a knife, too. He thought I'd stand there and let him kill me. Like I let him fuck me and beat me all those years. He liked his little knife; it was the one he used on me back when I was six, so that he could fit his dick inside me. Yeah, he liked his knife, but he sure didn't like mine very much." Her voice choked off.

"I'm sorry." Elliot said simply, horrified at the use of a knife in the rape of a six year old.

"This time I had the knife. And it was a big one. He never expected it. He looked so surprised." She smiled a little. "He didn't think I had the nerve. I wish he hadn't died so fast. I wanted to make it hurt more. Yeah." she added after a pause. "Yeah, I killed him. Do you want to send me to jail now Mister Police Detective?"

"No, I don't. I never wanted you to go to jail, Terri."

"Sure. That's why you couldn't let things go. Why you had to follow me and get in my face and never leave me the hell alone!"

"I was trying to help."

"I told you I didn't want your help! Why couldn't you just fucking listen to me?" Her voice was loud and accusatory.

"That guy in the diner raped you."

"After everything Bartell did to me, you still think that I fucking care?"

"I know you care. It doesn't matter that maybe it wasn't as awful as you experienced with Bartell. Now, Terri, I need you to let me go now. Put down the gun. Unlock me."

She stood up, gun in hand, looking at it with a strange expression.

"Terri, please. Everything is going to be OK. I'll help you. You killed Bartell in self-defense. You've been victimized all your life. No jury in the world is going to convict you even if they try to prosecute, which I think is unlikely. You'll get help. Counseling. Maybe we'll be able to find some of your Mom's family. You won't be alone anymore."

"So you're just going to forget that I hit you and tied you up?"

"Yeah. Sure. Only the two of us will know about that. End this now, Terri."

"I don't believe you. You're a liar. You lied about my mother."

He nodded. "Yeah, and I'm sorry about that. But I'm not lying now, Terri. I swear. Terri, please. It's all out in the open now. You're tired. I'm tired. We'll get this all sorted out, I promise. Just please… let me go now. It's over."

She nodded, resignedly. "You know, you're right."

Somehow he wasn't comforted, seeing the expression on her face.

"It's over." She held the gun up and moved the barrel to point under her own chin.

"Terri, don't."

"I want it to be over. Like you said." She shook her head slowly.

Damn it, he thought, panicked. "I didn't mean it like that. I meant the abuse is over. Having to be on the run is over. You can get a fresh start once we get things cleared up. Terri, please put the gun down."

"Things would have been better if he had killed me."

"You don't mean that, Terri. Please. You don't mean that. You're so strong. You got through all those years of torture. You survived. You deserve to get your life back."

Tears were running down her face, but she was silent – her face grim and resolute.

"And if you hadn't killed him, Terri, if you hadn't done what you did, that little girl in Wildwood - Chelsea - that little girl would be going through all the things you went through. He'd have raped her too, just like he raped you. He'd use the knife on her just like he did with you. You saved her. You did that, Terri! She's alive and well and it's because of you."

Her hands were shaking. The gun was shaking. He hoped to God she didn't pull that trigger.

"You saved her, Terri. You're a hero."

Her eyes were shut and she was shaking her head, crying without releasing the sound from her throat.

"You chose to live once, Terri. If you'd wanted to die, you could have let Bartell kill you in the woods and put you in that grave that he dug for you. But you didn't. You wanted to live. Don't throw that away… Don't let him kill you now."

She opened her eyes and looked at him for a long moment, and then the hand with the gun fell to her side. She stepped backward and sat down heavily on the sofa.

At least she didn't have the gun to her head anymore, he saw, gladly. Instead she held it loosely in her lap. Good. He waited and watched quietly, giving her time to process everything. It was a hell of a load, especially for such a young woman. No wonder her eyes had seemed a lot older than her seventeen years. He only hoped that she'd come to realize that she needed help, and that she'd trust him enough to take it.

His side cramped up suddenly from his awkward position against the wall. He groaned at the unexpected pain, and leaned over to ease the muscle.

At his motion, she got up from the sofa and walked toward him. He couldn't see the gun, didn't know what she had done with it. He froze.

She fished in her pocket and pulled out a key - the handcuff key. She leaned over him so she could reach his wrists and unlock them.

He was free. His muscles protested from the confinement, but he forced himself to stand slowly, leaning on the wall for support, not making any sudden movements. He didn't think she still had the gun on her, but he wasn't taking any chances. Looking around, he finally spotted the gun, left behind on the sofa. Police procedure dictated that he should take her down now - fast and hard. But he didn't care all that much about procedure at this moment.

He rubbed his wrists and adjusted his shoulders, which were stiff from his time in the cuffs. She backed away, watching him. When she reached the far wall, she slid down it to sit on the floor, her knees against her chin, arms wrapped around her legs, watching him. Elliot went over to the sofa, picked up the gun and holstered it safely. Then he picked up the phone. As he dialed, he told her, "It's going to be OK, Terri. Everything is going to be OK." And for the first time this whole case, he believed it.

-Fin-


End file.
